Every now and again I come across a game I never even knew existed and I really love. This is one of such cases. The Pilgrim’s Quest is a very good game that seems to be a cross of many popular games.
It’s a sort of a blend of Discovering America, Seven Cities of Gold and Colonization. Each of the games is very good on its own, so how does such a crossbreed work? In this case surprisingly well.
You board the Mayflower and set sail for the new world. You need to make sure you land at the right place and it can be tricky to navigate (you’ll probably need a few tries to successfully cross the ocean) and not to forget you need to bail water out. Luckily the game always shows you which commands you can use at a certain point of the game (when you need to bail a small warning will pop up with up and down arrows beside it, to know what you need to do).
Once on the other side you need to explore the area. There are several locations at which you can set up your first colony. Carefully study the characteristics of each location before deciding.
Once the colony is set you need to assign people to do various tasks (like hunting, helping the sick, cutting trees, making housing…), or you can go exploring around.
When you’re exploring you can enter native tribes and trade with them (they will gladly except things like beer and other goods they can’t make themselves, but be careful about guns – they might use them against you).
You can also find different locations where a mini game awaits you (riding the log, fishing, hunting) and all of those (if successful) contribute to your supplies.
And finally you can visit the captain of the Mayflower, who’s waiting to return to Europe. You can order supplies to bring on the return to the new world, or have him take some of your goods to Europe.
All in all the game is an interesting mixture of different genres that offers quite some diversity. The graphics are nothing spectacular and the sound simply isn’t there, but the controls are user friendly and the game although versatile, doesn’t make you loose the overview. A solid product that will offer you valid edutainment.