Have You Played… Starseed Pilgrim?

I played nine hours of sandbox puzzle game Starseed Pilgrim.

It has been six years since it came out.

I still don’t get it.

Starseed Pilgrim is about playing with blocks of coloured dirt and finding out what they do by planting little seeds in them. Basically, you have to navigate massive white voids by building blocks in a semi-random way to reach new places. It doesn’t explain any of your seed powers, you just have to toy around with them to see what they do. Green blocks will grow like a vine, a blue block will become a jump pad. It’s pretty straightforward, except when it isn’t.

Electron Dance once posted a video detailing the five stages of Starseed Pilgrim (bewilderment, acceptance, euphoria, denial, and obsession - in case you were wondering). “I’m going to share my experience of Starseed Pilgrim,” says the narrator, “without explaining anything whatsoever.” And this is something almost all writing about the game did when it was released, making it seem magical and unknowable. When actually it was knowable, and vaguely reluctant to explain its own rules. My process for going through this game only involved two stages, not five. Stage one: bewilderment. Stage two: shrugging.

Anyway, I looked up the ending. S'rubbish. Just a game about blocks, innit.