Pilgrim Cards
Pilgrim Cards is an app for unplanned journeys that embodies the practices of psychogeography and encourages lateral thinking. It offers a unique way of discovering the world in a playful way, with the aid of designated task cards, and encourages focus on the process of journey.
Download Pilgrim Cards for iOS
The App
Pilgrim Cards uses cards with randomized tasks drawn from a deck. The tasks are worded in a vague way that leaves room for interpretation and encourages the player to use their creativity.
Any of the selected cards can be skipped or set aside for completion at a later time, just as if they were analogue paper cards.
Maverick and The Shell are fundamental decks, both of which are based on the basic principles of the game. While Maverick consists of more than 100 of updated cards for spontaneous journeys through real-world environment, The Shell is designed for inner explorations, focusing on sensory awakening and mindful perception of the presence.
The gameplay is not competitive. There’s no way to win or lose. Players are free to decide whether or not to complete a task. As an atelic game, Pilgrim Cards is designed to enjoy the process, not to gain rewards. It only requires the player to accept new sensations and experiences with an open mind and to become involved in the process without expecting any particular results.
Background
This project was born in mid-2020 out of a longing to rediscover the world after all the time spent with pandemic constraints
In search of new approaches to interacting with the world, I became familiar with Guy Debord’s “Theory of the Dérive” (1956). I was captivated by the idea of taking an unplanned tour of an urban landscape, guided entirely by the feelings that it evoked. At that time I’ve been an avid user of Oblique Strategies, a card-based game designed by Brian Eno and Peter Shmidt (1975), which implements the idea of thinking and creating in a lateral way. I thought it would be interesting to synthesize both the concepts of psychogeography and lateral thinking techniques and came up with the idea of creating a card-based game for spontaneous exploration.
After two years of development1, Pilgrim Cards was released on AppStore in 2022. It was created by a team of specialists gathered under the banner of Locus Praxis, a newly created company:
- Maria Staroselets, creative director, street theatre specialist and psychogeorgraphy enthusiast
- Pavel Yevsayev, iOS developer
- Sergey Puhach, back-end developer
In addition to inspiring the team to undertake the project, I personally contributed to the project as an art director, graphic and UI/UX designer.
Getting From Here to There
Pilgrim Cards is in a state of constant development, with new features and functions are constantly being added. Most of them already could be seen and used in the current version of the app.
Locus Praxis is inviting creative teams, individuals, companies and cultural institutions to collaborate and deliver new forms of non-conventional and site-specific entertainment.
The complete story of the creation of the Pilgrim Cards was filled with unexpected discoveries, creative finds and magical coincidences, and will be covered in a separate publication. ↩︎