Small Town Terrors: Pilgrim's Hook Collector's Edition

Interesting story, nice gameplay.

It's very good!!!

Fun hidden object & point-and-click game. Relaxing with nice vibes.

This is an adventure Hidden Object Picture game. I played it on Windows 11 in the easiest mode. THUMBS UP!

An excellent adventure HOP game keeps you interested in the story and entertained with clear HOPs, good puzzles & mini games as this one does.

It played well with no glitches. It has a useful map, journal, hint button and strategy guide. Good graphics . it has morphing collectibles, BONUS chapter AND an extra game in which you look for 80 whale bones, LOL, all over the game area. While searching for bones, you might find some morphing items you missed before.

The thing I love about the hint button is that it will lead you to where you need to go next if you are stuck.

An older game, but really creepy ones are getting harder and harder to find. I thoroughly enjoyed it! Not up to the standards of the old Shiver and Stray Souls series, but still well done.

It's a good game. Also the bonus content is nice. The only downside is that you walk back and forth frequently. But luckily you can fast travel using the map.

A subpar game by current standards.

• The world is opened too fast, overwhelming you with dozens of locations and active spots. You simply can't remember everything.
  
• Constant backtracking is necessary.
  
• The inventory won't stay open.
  
• The map only shows some locations.
  
• There's no indication that collectibles have been found in the current scene.
  
[*]Too many high difficulty slider puzzles.

Very good HOG with several difficulty levels, a map, a very good overall design, not too many back-and-forths, no reuse of HO scenes.
The puzzles are well balanced & the game is quite long.
The story is pretty fun and the bonus chapter ends it well.
Good job Gunnar Games!

Pretty cool.

This game stands above other HO/Adventure games as it does not fall into the same mistake others have made (eg sudden HO scenes, low resolution, odd solutions etc). One top of that is a decent story (including a bonus chapter), good art and voice acting, decent puzzles and a moderate difficulty level.

The extra content makes it worth paying a decent amount for.

My only nitpick is "Castor's creatures". They aren't obvious enough. They are too small and don't change as frequently or as flashy enough to notice.

Not a bad hidden object game. The effects are pretty good, but the puzzles are very easy on casual settings. Spent about 5hrs including the bonus. Buy on special.

This was honestly one of the worst HOG/Point and Clickss I've played in quite a long time, and they are kind of an obsession of mine so consider that I do play quite a few. I pushed myself to finish it, and honestly am not sure why I did.

The Artwork really wasn't that bad, with some good blending of key objects into the background. However, that does lead into the main problem I had with this: The key objects were not logical.

I really want to rename this game: Inexplicable Reasons: The Hidden Object Game. Hear me out. The key objects, which for those who've never played such a game are objects that you use to solve puzzles in the point and click part of the game (i.e. the part that isn't one of the hidden object scenes), are completely illogical. Spoiler warning, I suppose, but at one point you use a gold brick to break open the glass on a fire extinguisher case. Because that's the first thing someone thinks of when they pick up a gold brick. This isn't a case of me finding just one of the objects laughable. It happened over and over again throughout the entire game. Things that you didn't need tools to remove suddenly needed tools to put back into place. Other items that most certainly would need a tool came free without any work. In one puzzle you placed three photos into a picture frame to complete it, rearranged said photos, and suddenly behind one of the photos was a slip of paper! Was it not there while you were rearranging? Why does one need 6 photos to remove one, from a non-magical frame, and find something? The world may never know.

I don't play these games for the plot, but this one was really hard to follow. The heroine evinces no actual surprise at any of the supernatural goings on, which may be because this is a sequel and I never played the first, or it may just be terrible writing. They attempted to get a lovecraftian horror thing going and it really just ended up more like a children's book.

I think I bought this from a bundle. I hope I bought this from a bundle. If I did not, I would like a time machine to rectify my mistake.

Maybe pay a couple of bucks for this. Do not pay $15.

This is an interesting puzzle game with Lovecraftian overtones. The puzzles are good and range from easy to hard. The voices, music, visuals, and story are also good. Oddly enough, three of the achievements plus the got-all-achievements achievement can be gotten only by playing/reading the bonus materials, which is unusual for this kind of game. Expect 7-8 hours of play, depending on how good you are at this sort of thing. I recommend buying it on sale.

Another Hidden Objects Adventure Game.

Overall, I enjoyed it. The endging of the main game was anticlimactic, however, the Bonus Chapter content made up for that. Plus, I enjoy that this companie bundles the hint manual with the product [Collector's Edition], so when I overlook something and am thoroughly STUCK, I don't have to go very far to find which small little thing I didn't see.

I really enjoyed that it let me set the difficulty, which changed visibility of hotspots, and how soon hints refreshed, etc. I chose the middle setting. [Hard?]

Overall: 4 of 5 Stars

Interface was great, I was just hoping for more from the story. And as always, some of the puzzled got too frustrating and I skipped them.

The more I play other games in the genre, the more I like this one. The atmosphere is the best part: following your brother, you come into a little island that was disturbing when you lived on it and has now gone to hell. You pick your way through the town, coming across people whose lives have been hit by what is going on, threatened by an unknowable enemy.

The story alternately explains just enough and not enough. It's not Lovecraftian in the sense of a huge impersonal universe, but its nods and homages are well done and its plot stays consistent throughout.

I keep buying games from this developer hoping for another like this.

Game Information

"Small Town Terrors: Pilgrim's Hook" Collector's Edition is a Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure game. The game was developed by Gunnar Games and published by Viva Media.

"Piligrim's Hook" is the second episode of "Small Town Terrors." Previous episode: "Livingston."

Since this is a collector's edition game, it comes with extra features that are not available in its' counterpart; standard edition.

The Game Review

Game Visuals

I want to mention that the visuals in the game are nicely done. The visuals can be adjusted in the game's option menu.

Game Audio

I want to mention that audio for the game is well done. Even though the audio is somewhat simplistic and repetitive. The audio can be adjusted in the game's option menu as well.

Gameplay

There are three different difficulty game modes to choose from: Casual; Hardcore and Expert.

The notebook keeps track of progression in the game. Such as story events and clues.

There is an interactive map in the game. It allows the player to fast travel between each location quickly without having the need to constantly backtrack. It also indicates that there are a variety of tasks that can be completed at various locations within the game. The interactive map is automatically given at the start of the game.

There is no padlock feature that is available to lock the inventory panel in place to make it stationary. The inventory panel comes automatically stationary.

The hidden object scenes consist of the following: Find 'x' amount and Traditional word lists. Some of these hidden object scenes may require little or no interactions.

The puzzles are fairly easy to solve without having the need to skip any of them.

There is a set of collectibles in the game: Sea Creatures. They are scattered throughout the game for the player to find.

There are fifteen different achievements to unlock from playing the game. Each of these achievements does come with some requirements that need to be completed before they are unlocked.

Since this is a collector's edition, there is a bonus chapter, but it can be accessed only after the main story is completed.

Miscellaneous

There are extra features in the game: Bonus Chapter; Soundtrack; Concept Art; Wallpaper and Game's Strategy Guide. Most of these extra features can be accessed only after the entire game is completed.

Final thoughts: I have found the game enjoyable to a certain extent. The replay value for the game is low. I would recommend this game, but not at the game's full price value.

How do I rate "Small Town Terrors Pilgrim's Hook Collector's Edition?" Meh. But, since there's no middle-of-the-road option, I've got to recommend it. However, while here writing this review, I noticed the list price for the game: just about $15. No. Just no. I got 5.3 hours of tolerable gameplay out of it (4.6 hours in the main game and 0.7 hours in the bonus chapter). Under no circumstances is that worth $15. I happened to have bought the game in the 8-item Sinister Bundle for a total of about $8 (call it a dollar a game). Now, that's worth it.

There's nothing special about the game. The graphics, puzzles, Hidden Object Games (HOGs), and voice acting are all acceptable for the genre. Personally, I found the gameplay to be just a bit more difficult to get through than in other similar games. One thing that did strike me is that near the end, the logic of the gameplay seems to fall apart: I had to resort to the Strategy Guide just to figure out WHAT I was supposed to be doing (not necessarily HOW). Also, the game is awfully weak in explaining what the bad guy is trying to do. At the end of the bonus chapter, it explains it's the standard "Pinky and the Brain" "try to take over the world" thing. But, if I've got the chronology right, the bad guy spent about two centuries tormenting a handful of people until his sphere of influence was reduced to about 5 people and an isolated town. Pretty weak.

For some HO gamers this game will be entertaining and enticing, for others it will be annoying and dumb. Once the rather contrived supernatural aspects are accepted even the "weirdness" that occurs is amenable.

The Story: Vera receives a cryptic phone call from her estranged younger twin Arthur asking/begging her to come back to their childhood home, Pilgrim's Hook, a remote ex-whaling island village off Nantucket, Massachuesetts (USA). (This fictional place would be off the coast of Boston, Cape Cod, or Martha's Vintage in Massachusetts for trivia lovers.) By the time she gets there her brother is missing and she must find him. Relatively typical storyline, except for the fact she finds him by chapter two. Meanwhile, an evil lurking Cthulhu-like octopus starts talking to Vera through water puddles and flat reflective surfaces. Creepy, and just exactly why does it want Vera? This is actual storyline: the mystery of island and why it is there. The evil denizen of the deep is left rather open to interpretation, however, its motives are not. It clearly states them. However, why it considered Vera to be a good candidate is well ... simply a poor choice of its part.

The gameplay: This is where the gamer will love or hate the game. If a straight forward linear hunt, search and find is your thing, then this game is not it. The gameplay is "open world". What I mean by this is the gamer can go anyway, look, hunt, search, find objects, and do puzzles in no given order. What can be done is limited to the clues given, items found and objects available in the inventory. This will cause "confusion" for linear thinkers, and complaints from those who dislike "wandering". (There is a built in walkthrough that is set up in a linear progression and a fast travel map.) The game "bottle necks" at certain points and the player can not progress until all objects needed to be found are found and the tasks needed to be done are completed. (Personally I consider these points to be self checks, if I cannot proceed I missed something somewhere.)

Puzzles: There are two types of HOs. 1) Straight forward HO scenes with at least one cleverly hidden object. (Not the type that makes one say "jerks" but the type that make one say "oh there it is, wow how did I miss that" 2) Find x amount of objects. Usually 3 different objects of different amounts.
There is a variety of other puzzle types some harder then others, one requires a lot of patience and one ultra classic I have not seen in years. (Some of those oldies will stump today's audience and this one will probably stump some players.)

There are two sets of Hidden Finds: Castor's Collection (fading in and out sea life) found throughout the main storyline, and the Whale's Bones, only available after finishing the bonus chapter.

Overall: Not a deep storyline and one that leaves a lot of room for intrepretation and unanswered questions if one thinks about it too much. "Open world" game style. A variety of puzzles (at least one ultra classic) and HO scenes. This a relatively short game, too, compared to more recent games.

One last thing: Achievements. All in-game achievements can be achieved in a single playthrough and some achievements are quite different from the usual achievement fare. If steam achievements and trading cards is the only reason you play then do not play this game, this game has neither. However, if you play HOs for the sheer joy of playing a decent story with decent HO scenes and puzzles then play this game.

I bought this game in the Sinister Stories bundle it comes in, and while the bundle is defininetly worth the price, I thought Alex Hunter and Brink of Conciousness were the only two worth buying on their own. I played the games in order of listing in the bundle, and the games seemed to get less impressive as they went on (though the House of 1000 Doors games are both better than the weird Castle game). It got to the point where I just stopped playing them when I got to Price for Our Sins, and didn't even bother playing this game.

I made a huge mistake. I randomly decided to try this game out because I was bored, and found it was just as good, if not better, than every other game of the bundle. The puzzles are challenging, the story is very good, and it honestly scared the crap out of me.

tl:dr version: If you love point & click games and can only get one from this bundle, buy this one and stay as far away as you can from Shadows: Price for Our Sins.

Good story.
You play a girl who gets' a weird phone call from her brother who is back on their home Isaland. She hated that place, but has a feeling that her brother needs her help, so goes back even if she swore never to set foot there again.
As soon as you arrive, you notice something wrong. Follow the story, find and save your brother while figuring out what is wrong with your birth place.
Very fun.
I recommend it.

This is a lovely little gem of a game. I turned it on one day when I had nothing better to do, and found myself hooked (that was not meant to be a pun, I'm so sorry). I found the story to be fun, and the puzzles to be engaging but not too difficult. The artwork was lovely, though my only complaint on that front is that the talking animations looked a little stilted. My only other issues are that I wish the achievements were linked to steam, and sometimes the placement of an item was very sensitive to a select few pixels. For instance, I spent about a half hour furiously trying to use a pry bar on a loose board, until I finally found the right area of pixels.

Overall, I find it very fun, but I wouldn't recommend spending $15 on it. It can be completed in a few short hours.

Another good point&click game. The game's mechanism is quite descent, find hidden objects, solve puzzles, linear story line. Luckily, there are some bonus chapters so it's worth your money even if you bought this game at full price.

There are achievements in game only but not showing on Steam so you don't have to complete all of them.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu f'taghn!

Okay, all silliness aside, this is a solid entry in the HOG genre. Good voice acting, a few cheap CGI scenes, and pretty (creepy) art. Semi-generic storyline with some interesting twists, and well-designed HOG scenes with a few fun twists such as themed finds and build-your-object. I will admit some of the included puzzles made me want to hit things, but there's always the 'skip' button. Add in a built-in achievement system, and this game covers all the basics and then some.

After a bit you'll be wanting to go after the main villain with a baseball bat just to get him to shut up, just to warn you.

I haven't played any other pure HoG's, so I'm coming at this from the perspective of an adventure gamer willing to put up with some cursor sweeping here and there. And Pilgrim's Hook turned out to be fine for that - the puzzles aren't trivial, but nothing that'll really stump you either. Artwork is well done and atmospheric. The plot is thin, as is the logic behind many of the "adventure" components of the game, but neither were so bad as to actually put me off the game.

If you're looking for a diverting, Cthulhu-esque adventure romp that keeps you entertained for 4-5 hours, Pilgrim's Hook is worth picking up (though probably not at full price.)