The Five Stages of Starseed Pilgrim

[@Aramsantze]

It's crazy how this videos never bored me after a lot a rewacthing, and i commented here after a lot of rewactch. Also after finished the game, it was long time ago. I absolutely will rewatch this video again. I just very like this video and the writing of the script. And probably motivates to make this kind of vidoes. Though it never happen, still this video just awesome. The 5 stages have too relateable sometimes, somehow it's just relateable. Before i play the game, i don't what it mean, but after finishing the game, oh man. It's soo perfectly depicting the experience of the game. The favorite quote from the video is "every single time" and the favorite part is from "three letter's of sneer" until the "let there be light", even after long time. It's just got better after rewatching. I hope more videos like this exist. Maybe i will back again after year's, then seeing new video's on this channel. Overwhelmingly good video. Seriously, aright that's all. Just saying.

[@Electrondance]

Thank you so much, this will make me work much harder on the new video I am editing!!!

[@imtilde]

you are extremely talented at this

[@Electrondance]

Thank you _italic_. Wish I could spend more time on this stuff!

[@Tribune12345]

This is one of the best videos I have ever seen.

[@Tribune12345]

Tribune12345 No seriously... All five of those stages applied to me. I even went on Twitter and asked Mr. Blow how far he got. "I finished the game." Ugh. That hurt.

[@Electrondance]

Tribune12345 I actually thought your first comment was spam :) When the original written piece was passed around the internet, some players saw their game in the five stages but others seemed to skip a few! I love that I'm not the only person to have approached the Pilgrim Godfather, Jonathan Blow.

[@RaspberryRockOffGridCabin]

This is the best game review I've ever seen. And yes I still play this game, years later...

[@Electrondance]

Thank you! I'm sure droqen will be happy to hear that some people are still playing his game years later. It's definitely a replayable sort of game as the challenge never goes away.

[@RaspberryRockOffGridCabin]

I know him, actually. I'm good friends with his Dad. I bugged him for a while to put in a 'pause' button. You put that very well, the challenge never goes away. Cheers.

[@Electrondance]

I think a lot of people would assume Starseed Pilgrim is just a one-shot game, solve the mystery, delete the executable. Did a pause ever get added? It was one of my major criticisms when I wrote my huge analysis of the game: "No pause key becomes a critical issue when working through challenges. The penalty for being distracted with the real world is to lose 10-15 minutes of work."

[@RaspberryRockOffGridCabin]

He never added one to my knowledge. I think he felt that it would give people an unfair advantage if they could pause to figure out what to do next. Although he could just easily make the screen go white when paused. I dunno.

[@vista777]

Hilarious and accurate. I played this game years ago, got bored and shrugged it off. It left an impression on me though, and when I came back this time I realized it was way more complex and polished than it appears to be. One of the most rewarding games to master.

[@Electrondance]

Always good to hear from people who have been through the same struggle! I still think reaching some of those triple-star challenges is difficult-verging-on-luck-will-see-me-through, like in the world where you can't dig, but YMMV. (I wrote up an extremely long and finely-detailed analysis at the time I completed it, if you're so inclined: www.electrondance.com/faith-of-the-pilgrim/)

[@devinmichelle9990]

This is brilliant

[@Electrondance]

Thanks Devin!

[@ampersandexplainer]

thank you for making this video it made me go back and beat Starseed Pilgrim, i was only at stage 1 before :)

[@Electrondance]

Nice! Probably you were playing the new version which doesn't quite have the OH MY GOD moment of the original. In the original, upon completing the last challenge, darkness pours out of the portal and devours the entire world - everything you've made. This happens without warning. In later versions, the player is given a choice.

[@ampersandexplainer]

@@Electrondance yep it had the "warning: everything will be gone forever" text. i imagine they had a lot of complaints, personally i did not need the text

[@zezzame]

I actually went to go see how much this was and saw it in my library, had managed to get it in a humble bundle. Downloading it now!

[@Electrondance]

+zezzame You will either hate it or - if you get through the confusion - possibly love it! My view these days is that SP is wonderfully sophisticated but too opaque for it's own good.

[@zezzame]

+Electron Dance Well, as a learning Game Designer, it will be interesting experience either way!

[@Electrondance]

+zezzame Good luck! See you on the other side.

[@sasuke2910]

And he was never seen again.

[@modularcuriosity]

I'm still at the part of the game where I'm trying to figure out how to get past the boredom.

[@xNivarius]

This video nails it so fucking hard holy shit Well done

[@Electrondance]

+zrw Thanks! I'm quite proud of this one :)

[@xNivarius]

its taken me 3 years and 3 goes at it, but i finally finished it jesus christ what a ride

[@Electrondance]

Congratulations! It's not an easy achievement by any means.

[@hoxhabunker8407]

Most entertaining, intelligent game review on youtube, can see you put a lot of work into it. Deserve x100 subscribers, youtube algos sadly would only reward a relentless stream of uploads.

[@Electrondance]

Thank you hoxha! If I have to choose between a small cabal that enjoys the infrequent stuff I put out or 100x subscribers, I'll take the cabal :)

[@NunSuperior]

I played for about an hour and never got past stage one. Maybe I should try again... friggin' Jon Blow.

[@Electrondance]

+NunSuperior I think it can go either way! You might end up resenting it or finding it incredibly deep (and I mean gameplay deep, rather than story deep). As you can probably tell, I think it's very clever, but I also think it's too opaque for its own good and can be frustrating as heck. This has led to a great deal of notoriety and developer droqen put a great comment on my full-of-spoiler-analysis-so-don't-read-it-yo essay about how its success was unexpected. It was supposed to the "B-side" for another game (Probability 0).

[@Electrondance]

Probability 0 is something which you might consider a precursor to Downwell and it's the more "traditional" arcade action game. Starseed Pilgrim, which would came with it, was meant to be this strange curiosity. But Pilgrim was picked out by some indie devs of note and Probability 0 faded into the background.

[@JohnGottschalk]

This is really fucking good. And I like the logo, is it new?

[@Electrondance]

John Gottschalk Thanks John! Yes the logo is new: it was introduced at the start of April to mark the site turning five years old.

[@Chopstewie]

I downloaded a game and instead revived some kind of complex torture mechanism for person afflicted with my particular version of color blindness. Stars and keys and distant platforms, but at the cost of my nerves.

[@Electrondance]

+Chopstewie I hadn't thought about what this game was like through a colourblind lens. I did get confused sometimes between the colours myself, although I think droqen changed the shape of the different seeds to help distinguish them in the later releases.

[@Drinthony]

I must know about the Lost Levels shortcut

[@GraystripeSpeedruns]

Just beat the game good video! Very accurate I bought it months ago then my internet went out last week and I was like eh why not I've been obsessed

[@Electrondance]

Congratulations! It's some achievement to get through the whole thing. Like I was *this* close to giving up at the end... If you want more, I wrote a in-depth analysis of its structure a few years ago including some criticisms where it felt unfair (we had plenty of debate in the comments). www.electrondance.com/faith-of-the-pilgrim/

[@SermonOnAMount]

I actually can't tell if you are talking about a video game or real life

[@Electrondance]

excellent point

[@psychicpumpkin]

both

[@rhetoric5173]

Beautiful! Can you share the video editing software used in this artwork?

[@Electrondance]

I used Serif Movie Plus X6 at the time but... they've stopped developing it. These days I am using MAGIX Vegas.

[@nbtwall7287]

why do you have two shortcuts of the talos principle?

[@Electrondance]

Hi! It's been awhile since I watched this one, what shortcuts are you referring to?

[@Electrondance]

Ahhh! I see! The shortcuts on the desktop in the video. I *think* one is for The Talos Principle demo and the other is for the full game. I don't think it's The Road to Gehenna because that came out after this film was originally posted on KZbin.

[@Flackon]

"hurrah for pointless"

[@vanderkarl3927]

Don't give up, skeleton! Try finger but hole

[@buttonasas]

I made some youtube magic and it probably deleted my old comments. :/ A couple months ago, I've mentioned I didn't realize there was more in the game than I've found. In fact, I was still kind of new to the game compared to this very moment. The comment chain was nice and I've greatly enjoyed the game since but, ultimately, _there is nothing left there but to love a painted world_ and I'm thankful for you've shown my world wasn't yet painted.

[@buttonasas]

Hmm, it seems the ending has changed since the writing of Faith of the Pilgrim, have you seen The Lie?

[@Electrondance]

Hello! Glad you made it through the rest of the game! Yes, droqen changed the ending just before I posted the article - here's the comment where someone revealed this: www.electrondance.com/faith-of-the-pilgrim/#comment-21248 No, I haven't seen The Lie. I assume this is the 2011 film? (I've just been Googling...)

[@buttonasas]

No, The Lie is the addition to Starseed Pilgrim. I was asking to confirm it was the thing the update added.

[@Electrondance]

Ahhhh, yes. I think I have seen that. Droqen sent me a save game for the new version so I could see the alternate ending. The original had the portals spew out blackness that consumes everything rapidly - terrifying. There was no final island.

[@lCharles445l]

Gotta agree with 4:24, that is pretty much why I bothered to play and finish the game. Personally, Starseed Pilgrim is not a game I would recommend to those looking for a game to play to lighten up their day or spend some free time with. I'd instead only recommend it to those who are interested in game studies or development, as it is absolutely not for everyone.

[@Electrondance]

lCharles445l I hadn't checked out the Steam page for a long time until yesterday, when droqen announced he was discounting the game for the launch of my video. Many of the recommended reviews are negative and it has an overall rating of "mixed". I wrote a massive spoilery analysis of the game after writing Five Stages and believed there were a number of design aspects which contributed to unnecessary confusion/frustration. But, if you can get into it, it's absolutely amazing.

[@Tribune12345]

Electron Dance I'd like to see your analysis - will you be posting it to ED?

[@Electrondance]

Tribune12345 it was written some time ago! Over here: www.electrondance.com/faith-of-the-pilgrim/

[@ollllj]

worst bioshok review.

[@Electrondance]

true