The Pilgrimage

One thousand years beyond the fall of Earth, one last drink may yet be your epitaph... Enter, the Pilgrim: A lone adventurer, vagabond... tourist. Last night, our intrepid hero arrived in the holy monastery town of Firesend, to begin his pilgrimage, to visit the shrines, to pray and reflect, to find enlightenment, and perhaps to find atonement for a dramatically unspecified and narratively compelling shadowy past... ...Of course, first he stopped off at the pub. And that's about as far as his sepia-toned memory gets before it turns to purulent purple, and fades to black amid a blur of booze and bad choices.

An Internalized Episodic Series... Forgoing traditional episodic releases, The Pilgrimage is tale that will grow in the telling. Play Chapter 1 now, for free! When you reach the end of chapter 1, don't lose that save - pick up where you left off as soon as chapter 2 is released as a free update to the core game! In the meantime, keep playing and exploring! Grab The Pilgrimage for free any time before the final chapter is released, and it's yours to have and to hold, from this day forward, till Windows 11 do us part!

Presenting Chapter 1: The Porcelain Crown of Regret

We join our fated hero the morning after, with his face in a puddle of filth, besieged by the cruel sobriety of the coming day, and the voice of a landlord laying claim to a debt. He has no money, he has no memory, he... frankly has no hope of avoiding the impending consequences of his actions. But when you hit rock bottom, the only way is up... right? With a key in his pocket, and high hopes for a shower and a change of clothes, he sets off with a lurch in his stride and a pain in the back of his head.

So begins his grand journey through the trials and tribulations of a foreign town at the crack of dawn. Will he survive the first few hours of his adventure? Will he even make it to the end of Chapter 1? With any luck, he'll see some sights, buy some tacky souvenirs, and begin to uncover a tale of love, crime, treasure, more crime, pain, tragedy, triumph, booze, a bit more crime, a number of awkward conversations, and a sprinkling of crime. For isn't that what all good holidays are about?

Tragedy and triumph... Explore! Interact! Solve puzzles and uncover mysteries with the aid of traditional adventure game tropes! Keep track of your adventuring with the aid of a slightly less traditional dynamic journal! Progress, or die in a variety of interesting and collectible ways, amassing epitaphs like the grim trophies of your more foolish moments!

Awkward conversations... Talk to anyone and everyone! See that random person on the street? Talk to them! Engage in branching conversations like the RPG classics of the 90s! Manually ask them about a variety of topics, or simply type rude words to see how offended they'll be (because we all know you will)! Say the right thing, ask about the right topic, and stumble your way blindly into a variety of sub-plots, hidden insights and general trivia!

Type the wrods... The Pilgrimage features an extensive text parser! Type the verbs! Type the nouns! Type the adjectives! Sprinkle some prepositions over the whole thing for extra flavour! Then get drunk, mash your sausage fingers into the keyboard and produce that which can barely be called language at all! Marvel at the game's heroic attempts at understanding even the most heavily jumbled words or profanity-laden sentences through the power of science!

Read the books... Play the game, then buy the books! Buy the books, then play the game! Play the game, then buy the books, then read the books you bought IN the game for an extra velvety layer of additional luxury immersion! Then buy more books to add to your collection! Did I mention the books? There are books!

Try before you buy... There's a demo! In it you shall find a sample of the game, and samples of any upcoming books! Take a look! Right now! I dare you! Exclamation marks!