There seem to be a lot of pretentious reviews for this game on the internet, which really put me off. Despite my criticisms, the dev gave me a copy through twitter. Stripped of the pretty words others seem to lavish on it, it’s basically a platformy puzzler you play at your own pace which you’ll either hate, grow bored of quickly, or love. There is nothing innately pretentious about the game itself which makes me wonder why indie game reviewers try so hard.

In Starseed Pilgrim, you collect “seeds” to build block formations to explore your central hub and unlock other pilgrims. To collect seeds, you must venture into a place where the darkness of space is actively devouring everything. The darkness of space, if you jump into it, inverts the playing field, making those solid blocks into empty space and vice versa. You want to collect seeds and keys in order to get back home and use them. You can’t grow anything in the darkness of space so thought must be invested beforehand.

The game largely leaves you to your own devices, so you’re free to explore whatever you can reach. Different coloured seeds grow into different shapes and sometimes do special things, like provide seeds in the darkness of space or allow you to jump higher. Certain levels have rules. It’s up to you to figure out what does what but nothing is so obtuse that it’s impossible.

If you find peace in repetition and enjoy setting your own goals, I’d say buy this game, otherwise you won’t get much out of it. And on the front of accessibility, the game has colour blind mode on by default and supports scaling. I was appreciative of both.

In Starseed Pilgrim, the first thing you learn is that you can break blocks and plant seeds. You are then set upon a large, earthy block suspended in white void and expected to use your fresh and limited knowledge of this universe so far to explore away from your starting point. Different seeds grow at different speeds, shapes, directions, and wonderful sounds. You plant away and start to climb, sure without being sure that there must be something else in this vast emptiness besides yourself.

There is a challenge to the exploration, discovery, and successful return home – enough that even with the game's insistence on minimal to absent guidance, you'll want to make it at least once.

However, it is after surmounting this first hurdle that I no longer felt compelled to play, because the more I saw of Starseed Pilgrim, the more I recognized it as a solid proof of concept rather than a complete and satisfying game. Allow me to explain.

The blocks, the seeds, and the void are simple components: easily understood with some trial and error. These same elements, however, are also samey to a fault and become bland with overexposure. While the simplicity of the core mechanic is both visually and sonically polished, the simplicity of the game that contains it is lonely and boring; it feels incomplete. You will make your way from base block to base block with practiced efficiency, but there is less and less of a reason for you to do so. Exploration continues to reveal more of the same, as if the game had something against variety in design.

I have heard that, with some doing, you can indeed find the novel experiences that I expected as the rewards for my progress. I'm afraid that I just don't have the patience. I enjoy exploration for exploration's sake, but when a game tells me nothing and shows me even less, should I really be expected to keep at it?

This game is amazing! I'll warn you, it can be pretty hit or miss, but if it's a hit, it's a unique experience that you don't want to deprive yourself! I wish I could tell you all about it, but I can't. I can tell you plenty of things its like, but I can't really describe it except for in the very abstract. And my abstract description is that it is a game about learning. There is little in the way of obvious instruction. It's up to you to figure it out. When I first looked at screenshots, I saw random squares in patterns that were aesthetically pleasing. Now I look at them and see order. I see several levels of order. To tell you more about the game would be to rob you of the experience of transitioning from seeing order to seeing chaos as you play this game.

As for things its like, I would say it is like...

* Learning a new language
* Getting lost in a maze, and that joy when you finally find your way out
* David Bowie's song, "Moss Garden"
* Discovering that the world is round, firsthand
* The NES game, Wario's Woods
* Your first kiss
* The "Aha!" moment that you get when figuring out a puzzle
* The 11th Hour, by Graeme Base


If you play this game, I can't promise you you'll love it. It is the sort of game that resonate with some people, but will just not be everyone's cup of tea. What I can tell you is that if it resonates with you, you will REALLY enjoy it, and might find it the most worthwhile game you've bought in a long time.

Starseed Pilgrim – because apparently having the notes of a simple major chord randomly blared at you in bog-standard timbres, while having your eyes burned out by a pure white background and being subjected to pre-pubescent poetry so bad it makes your toes curl up like jam rolls, is the height of abstract puzzle entertainment.

I've read reviews which bang on about how the game 'lets' you discover its mechanics through experimentation as though this was some great revelation and hadn't been done countless times before. Although perhaps in a world of rote consolised tripe with tutorials so patronising they feel the need to tell you to press the 'jump' button in order to jump, this might wrongly be seen as some sort of novelty.

Thing is, there really is nothing new or intelligent in terms of content here, just obtuse and obscure presentation. Put simply: Starseed Pilgrim is a game designed to make insufferably pretentious games journalists wax meaninglessly multisyllabic while spunking in their trousers. While those of us who actually like to play games move on to something better.

I live and breathe "too deep for you" games. I gave this game a chance. I put on my diving gear. Somehow, it's *still* too deep for me (in the sarcastic way).

I appreciate the short pieces of poetry (unlike some other negative reviewers), but the cool and mysterious opening doesn't seem to ever be capitalized upon. It takes far too long (30 minutes at least) to make any progress in the game, and I don't think my experience was benefited at all by the game not teaching me how to play. Compare this to a game like Super Metroid, which is vague in service of the story and still finds a way to explain gameplay in non-traditional ways.

To be fair, I didn't finish it. I unlocked two additional styles of play, which despite being the easiest to unlock, were some of the most boring unlockables (compared to a list of unlockables that I saw). I'd put *something* interesting up front to keep the player interested. As it is, it's a pretty boring game that doesn't explain itself. Maybe this is because if they did explain it to the player, the player would immediately notice its simplicity.