We feature a Toronto game every month, and this month the spotlight goes to Starseed Pilgrim by developer Droqen, as well as Ryan Roth, Mert Batirbaygil, and Allan Offal. And no, this ain’t a gardening simulator for pioneers in space. Begone, butter-churning planet-hopping fanatics! For all paying and volunteer Hand Eye members, your game is free. Not a member? To join, head here!

Starseed Pilgrim and the Art of Intuition

As a kid, I spent some springtimes breathing on alfalfa sprouts. I would beg milimetres from baby greens in clear plastic cups with every gross exhale, relying on some pop science factoid about carbon dioxide speeding up growth. I’ve accidentally revived the same approach in my playthrough of Starseed Pilgrim, my bated breath spittling up the screen whenever my galactic garden is swallowed, yet again, by dark tendrils of oblivion. And every time it happens, I have no idea how I could have played better.

If you haven’t battled Starseed Pilgrim before, let’s put it this way: the game’s help page just tells you to keep going. There’s a silent agreement between anyone who has played it to explain as little about the game as possible, so others can go through the journey without expectations. The least spoiler-ridden summary I can give is that you play a pilgrim puttering around white voids, planting symphonic space seeds that repeatedly succumb to a creeping darkness from below. I’ve seen a few terms for a certain place in the game related to the darkness, but I’ve ignored them and dubbed the place the Shadow Realm. The Shadow Realm, the white voids, and the seeds all thrive off your head-scratching, only unfurling when you’ve gone from noggin-picking to trying to bash your skull into the nearest wall. Somewhere between those moments lie the game’s greatest move: actively encouraging intuition.

Visuals or narratives cause most “is this a good game” squabbles, but Starseed Pilgrim divides players because of mechanics alone. Hardcore fans insist it is an experimental masterpiece that can only be played to fully understand. Cynics argue that if the game doesn’t make how it works easy to comprehend, the experience isn’t worth understanding. I can see both sides. The learning curve is steep, but it eventually straightens out and rewards those who fiddle with the resources they’re given, instead of relying on tutorials and spoon-fed protips. However, I can understand why the time-strapped can’t invest in an experience that no one can guarantee is traditionally fun. This is what separates those who have no idea what sudoku is, but fill it in anyway from those who chew their pens to crosswords.

There are many unseens in the game. Not necessarily invisible, just beyond the periphery of patterns we have rooted in our lizard brains to detect. Without spoiling, the behaviours of the seeds and environments don’t get progressively more encrypted. They’re mysterious in the biblical sense, closed off to the uninitiated. And they stay closed off, until players stop expecting something that’s deliberately obtuse to suddenly become predictable. Players can only cultivate comprehension of the game’s reality when they forget about goals and bask in trial-and-errors.

While writing this, I played Starseed Pilgrim in short, ragequittish intervals. I never quit because I was mad at the game or my own abilities; it was frustration with my own ineptitude in diverging. What was holding me back wasn’t how I played, but the narrow scope of procedures I had tried. I hated that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. When I eventually unearthed new ways to combine actions, or discovered unexpected fruits to my labours, it didn’t feel like the game was rewarding me. Starseed Pilgrim was just acknowledging a consequence of my actions.  If that kind of gameplay appeals, set some time away for this and try sowing.

You can get Starseed Pilgrim on Steam and from its official website. Hand Eye members got it for free via Humble Bundle. This spotlight game series will only be around for two more months, so if you want to support us while getting a free local game, join up while you can.