Ira - Act 1: Pilgrimage Demo

Sci-fi is one of the most difficult subjects to approach in literature, especially if one wants to create completely new worlds with different rules and conventions. It may have seemed easy to people like Douglas Adams and Arthur C. Clarke, but that just proves how talented they were. In fact, the latter accurately predicted a variety of technological breakthroughs in his writings, which is that much more impressive.

Ira - Act 1: Pilgrimage is a point-and-click adventure game that strikes pretty hard from the first few minutes, especially when it comes to atmosphere. It starts like some kind of pre-nuclear apocalypse Fallout, but it suddenly switches to something that resembles Interstellar, at least in some regards. There’s mystery, drama, and even a little bit of horror to spice things up, so it should definitely be a great ride.

Speaking of which, the story is a tad difficult to grasp, mainly because not everything is explained at the moment. You play the role of a boy by the name of Ira, whose parents are poor and living in debt. His father has to be a miner on Mars in order to make due, and it’s not a very pretty job. However, it seems like these are just Ira’s memories, because the game throws you a few years in the future, with Ira waking up in a cryogenic chamber after a long period of sleep.

The game uses classic point-and-click gameplay mechanics, but you won’t get to see them in action too much in this short demo. Theoretically, it should be very similar to every other game using them, which means that you’ll have to interact with objects, collect items and use them to solve a variety of puzzles. The story is the most important element, however, which is exactly how it should be anyway.

One thing that’s worthy of praise even in this short demo is the visual and audio presentation. The designers use nice camera angles, great atmospheric music and professional voice acting to convey a very unique world, which helps a lot with the mood and your ability to enjoy the experience. While the graphics are not exactly extraordinary, the game makes up for it with exquisite landscapes and good scene framing.

All things considered, Ira - Act 1: Pilgrimage comes out of nowhere, but it surely packs quite a punch. Everything about it shows how dedicated the developers are, and it would be a great thing to see the project completed.

You can support the developers by donating in their Kickstarter project.