Pilgrim's Path
Overview
Pilgrim's Path is a narrative-driven, choice-based game where you play as Miguel, a young adult struggling with his mental health and unsure of what to do with his life.
His mother, Francisca, tired of seeing him stuck in this state, encourages him to make the pilgrimage from their hometown of Porto to Santiago de Compostela. She hopes that the time spent outdoors, and perhaps the spiritual journey, might help him heal.
The game explores the cultural experience of the pilgrimage, showing how even a seemingly simple journey can help someone reconnect with themselves and find a sense of purpose.
Project Analysis
Pilgrim's Path didn’t turn out as we expected, mainly due to scope planning issues. We knew from the start that we only needed to deliver a vertical slice, but we underestimated how long tasks would take, and we still need time for other courses, so we ended up trying to do more than we could handle. Another major setback was our original game programmer repeatedly missed deadlines, but despite that, the team kept giving him second chances, which delayed progress even further. We ended up expelling him from the studio, and I assumed his tasks only two weeks far from the final deadline.
This was our first time creating a “complete” game, and we learned a lot from the experience, from understanding how much time development truly takes to realizing the importance of clear communication and teamwork.
I don’t think there was any particular part of Pilgrim’s Path where I truly stood out or failed, nothing felt notably strong or particularly weak. If someone pitched me the same idea today and asked me to handle the design, I would approach it in a completely different way, simply because of everything I’ve learned from this project and many more, after all it was my "first" "real" game. If I had to choose one thing to be proud of, it would be managing to handle all the programming in just two weeks. That said, the game is clearly poorly programmed, not only because of the tight timeline, but also because game programming isn’t my main area. As a result, the mechanics were rough and unpolished, and we didn’t have time for proper user testing, which could’ve helped us catch and fix many of the issues design-wise.
Roles
General Game Designer
Design manager
Level designer
Systems designer
UX designer
Narrative designer
Content designer
User Researcher
General Quality Assurance
Game tester
Usability Researcher
Project Manager
Community Manager
Other contributions
Game Programmer
Information form
Team experience:
a few months
Team size:
Team - 7
Core team - 2
Extras - 5 *
Development budget:
0€
Development Time:
~4 months
Year of release:
2023
* People related to sound design and composing
