Public sign puzzler The Pedestrian is out on Steam

My experience with public signage is limited. Either I'm ignoring signs at my own expense, or imagining the fright of being the road worker who has to place the 'Lane Closed' sign in front of oncoming motorway traffic. But now The Pedestrian is out I have another, much safer way to interact with signs.

This puzzle game was in development for about five years, a fact I learned while watching a video of the folks at Skookum Arts reacting to their old builds—please, more developers do this. It's come a long way since then, boosted by a successful Kickstarter, but the central idea hasn't changed all that much. What has most visibly been upgraded is the busyness of the game's environments and the complexity of the puzzle design.

The gist is that you're helping out a person who travels through the 2D world of public signs. Each sign is a micro platformer that you have to navigate, connecting wires, collecting keys, and pushing crates. Reach a certain door or ladder and the person inside warps over to the next sign. One of the best parts of the game is the transition from one sign to the next as the camera sweeps across a bustling city roads or into the maintenance areas of a sewer.

But it's not as easy as that, as often you'll have to rearrange the placement of the signs so that they connect in different ways. Some levels also have the inner world of the signs interact with the 3D world outside of them. You may have to power a circuit board using a number of electrical plugs, for example, which powers a way to the next area. It's not just signs you'll be jumping through, either, as some levels have the screens of televisions and handheld game consoles as part of the journey.

If you want to try it out you can buy The Pedestrian on Steam. And if this is your kind of thing then it's worth checking out the best puzzle games on PC. Yes, Portal 2 is in there, of course.