Pilgrim is a first-person point-and-click adventure. Players click through a series of static frames—a slideshow of pre-rendered 3D environments—to move around. The player is not free of their movements and must often strategically click screen points in a certain order to reach a destination. The cursor becomes an arrow to indicate a possible movement, and a click transitions the player to the next location. It is possible to die in the game; one cause of death includes the player failing to accomplish certain time-dependent challenges. If the player dies they are returned to the beginning of the latest checkpoint, often after a cutscene. There are also two unwinnable states. One of them occurs if the player gives all their money to a beggar in Toulouse, in spite of needing it to go past the very next door. The player is encouraged to "save early, save often". The game's final puzzle has been described as "no less than an exam about what you're supposed to have learned". The game comes with two discs, which are required to install the game; regardless of where the player is,clarification needed Disc 1 must be inserted every time they boot up the game. The "Inventory" interface has three elements. "Bag" is used for acquired items. The number of items and the weight a player can carry are limited. "People" contains the characters the player has encountered, knows about, or wants information on. "Items" has the objects which have been seen or heard about but not acquired. "People" and "Items" of interest can be brought up as topics of conversation with others. To use an item in "Bag", the player clicks on it to activate it (it then has a yellow box around it), then clicks "View". To offer a topic of discussion, the player clicks on an item in the "People" or "Items" tabs to activate it. They then click on a character in the "View" screen to talk about it. The puzzles require both reflection and patience. The "Bag" items and the clues within the "Encyclopedia" can be applied and manipulated to solve puzzles thereby advancing the story. The latter is similar to how the Chronopedia in used in the Broderbund adventure game Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time. The game has a hint system to provide clues for the more obscure puzzles. The entries in the in-game "Encyclopedia" have been described as "spartan", consisting exclusively of text. Sometimes when a character mentions a topic that is available in the "Encyclopedia" during a conversation. A keyword will appear on the screen which may then be clicked to bring up the corresponding entry. While not required, this feature allows the player to delve deeper into the interesting historical nuggets featured throughout the game. The player has an in-game notebook, into which they may copy-paste extracts from the "Encyclopedia".
Reception
In June 1997, before the game's release, Stop magazine published an article which described the game's genre as most akin to the video game Myst (1993), in terms of its technical design. Upon the game's announcement in September 1997, Marijô Zilveti of Folha De S.Paulo expressed joy that the game would bear a resemblance to Coelho's novel as he was directly involved in the creation of the script. In October 1997, PC Jeux wrote that its beauty and intensity made up for its "technical poverty". In November 1997, La Croix selected the game for its article Les créateurs français innovent avec poésie (French Creators Innovate with Poetry), describing the game as a "historical-New Age quest". That month, PC Joker wrote that the game's bugs were enough to sour the player experience, despite the title's beautiful aesthetic design. In December 1997, PC Player said it was initially turned off by the cumbersome, bland, and strange game, but after a while became enamoured by the "mystery and profundity" of the game's images and sounds. Power Play negatively compared the game to Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, PC Action described the interface as "unusual but very intuitive", GameStar negatively compared the game to Riven and Zork: Grand Inquisitor while accusing it of being both too complicated and obsolete, and PC Games said the game lacked tension, variety and mental challenge. In January 1998, PC Power praised the animations and the elaborate background information, though lamented that it missed award status by having handling and gameplay issues. That year, Joe Nettleback of PowerPlay wrote that he was pleased with the German dub. In 1998, Nataliya Dubrovskaya of Game.EXE said that the game was a beautiful entry in the "Euroadventure" genre, along with contemporaries such as Dark Earth, Nightmare Creatures, and Cryo Interactive titles like Atlantis: The Lost Tales, Dreams to Reality, and Versailles. ; the site praised the game's beauty and solid story. Privat Computer PC loathed the game, describing it as a "French failure"
In 2001, Ray Ivey of Just Adventure, a self-professed fan of the developer who enjoyed Ring (1999) and Faust (1999), picked up Pilgrim "mostly out of academic interest" to examine Axel Tribe's debut work; he described the title as "lovely", "mysterious", "educational", "compelling", and a great entry in the adventure game genre. That same year Randy Sluganski ranked the game 7th in his list of The 10 Best Adventure Games That (Almost) No One Has Ever Played in the same publication, complimenting it for tackling subjects such as theology and superstition, and describing it as an "artistic tour-de-force" that addresses its themes with a sense of adventurousness, power, and scope. Gordon Aplin of Metzomagic and Quandary did not buy the game when it was originally released as the box cover mislead him into thinking it was an action/adventure game like Knight's Chase. After playing the game in 2001 he deemed it a valiant first effort by Arxel but incomparable to the later titles like Ring and Faust. In a 1999 Faust review Metzomagic's Steve Metzler said the company had "improved tremendously" when compared to Pilgrim's "incomprehensible" puzzle design. In a 2002 review Tap Repeatedly's Enigma described Pilgrim as "mind-blowing", "stunning", "outrageous", and "constantly interesting".
In 2003, Polish adventure game review site Przygodoskop wrote that the title had outdated graphics, a dull narrative, and ordinary puzzles, and considered its Polish release a cash-grab due to the popularity around the author at the time. In a 2004 review of the game, JPP of Jeux Video said he preferred the beginning of the game due to its logical puzzles, as opposed to the latter half's "spiritual initiatory quest" narrative which has vague puzzles to match. In 2006, Avsn-nikki of Adventurespiele admitted that the graphics appeared outdated, and noted that in order to succeed you need to ask every individual character every tiny conversation thread. Old-Games.ru listed the game in its International Festival of Adventure as a rare and interesting entry in the genre. The site noted that the game was released just after historical-themed adventure games came into fashion in the late 1990s, while praising the novice developer for Moebius' beautiful work and favourably comparing Coelho's confident script to the work of Cryo Interactive and index+; the site criticised the interface for taking up nearly half the screen and the transformation of Moebius' "cute and stylish" 2D drawings into low-polygon 3D dummies, but deemed it a historical, cultural, and entertainment achievement, and praised the developer's use of authentic melodies expressing a desire for them to continue this in their future work. AVEC's Andrea Maroni thought the game did not attract "the interest it deserved".
