Super Life of Pixel

This game claims to be about following a single character through a number of console systems. You would think that emulating the game and art styles would be important then. While superficially and at a single glance the art styles change they do not actually conform to limitations present by each system. Instead every console plays exactly the same other than a new coat of paint. If you are attracted to the idea of playing games through the ages this is not for you. If you want a bog standard platformer that doesn't seem to actually understand the appeal of its own themes then go nuts.

Do you wanna know more about the 8-bit & 16-bit era? Play Life of Pixel! This game faithfully recreates the aesthetic of the good old consoles and gaming computers. Each stage is thematic (Atari, NES, Amiga, Master System, Commodore 64, and so on) and starts with curiosities and technical information about these machines. Nostalgia is very strong here. You really feel you're playing a classic from the past (and there's a lot of homages, like Pitfall, Mario and Mega Man levels). The chiptune soundtrack is made using the original sound-chips for each machine Even some graphical glitches very common on 8-bit systems are recreated. The game itself is challenging, but it isn't frustrating in any way. Your goal is to collect gems to pass levels, special gems to unlock more levels and fruits/candy to unlock even more levels and some achievements. Life of Pixel is recommended to every gamer that has passion for this hobby. It's a joy to play!

Initial impressions, revised: This is another in a long line of feel-good, reverent throwbacks to my gaming childhood: a 2D platformer designed in the aesthetic of several 80s-90s-era, 8 and 16-bit video game consoles, including personal computers of the era. You play a green pixel, appropriately named Pixel, who's fed up with being one in millions on the screens of the latest and greatest AAA titles. Pixel wants to harken back to a simpler time, when pixels really meant something other than a spec on a monitor/TV size chart and a speck on the screen. As a result, Pixel ventures back into the past when games and pixels were married to each other, an age when compressing graphical fidelity into a system required deftly manipulating the limitations of the console with every game. Inside each console (there's quite a few) you can find a short but varied series of platforming levels, all of which are designed in such a way as to emulate the look and feel of many retro consoles and comp...

Yet another nostalgia game which takes decades of history and manages to compress it into a single pointless and poorly designed platformer. I was hoping that the complexity of the game would increase to the point that it became interesting, but it remained a "get gems -> find exit" experience all the way. There are some "secret areas" but there's no fucking point finding them because all you ever do in this game is jump around and die on spikes/water. Games in the 80s and 90s were better than this.

[b]A nostalgic, colorful, simple platformer, Life of Pixel explores the evolution of consoles from cassettes to the 16 bit era.[/b] Life of Pixel is a fun, well constructed, lighthearted love letter for a lengthy history of gaming, demonstrating the evolution of graphics and mechanics for a basic one dimensional platformer. The game spans 13 consoles, beginning with the ZX81 and Atari 2600, and ending with the NES, SNES, Sega Master System, and Sega Genesis. You are a square with a face named Pixel who has befriended an elderly, bespectacled, mustachioed, professorial pixel with a face who often shows up to give hints. Your friendship is based on your interest in the evolution of game systems over time and his knowledge of each, conveniently and informatively passed on to the player when selecting a stage from the appropriate system. Each system has 8 stages, and to progress to the next stage a number of collectables have to be collected, and the exit reached. Additionally gems and s...

I really really wanted to like this game. I absolutely love the idea behind it, but the execution is so flawed it is not worth playing. As I am sure youhave figured out from the trailer, life of pixel is an old school platformer that takes you through various generations of games. The game starts out in black and white, one room levels with very simple graphics. As you progress through more and more levels you open up new systems which open up better graphics and more complex levels. The problem is the levels are incredibly poorly designed. The later levels are broken down into rooms and there is some exploration involved. There is no way to look up/down/left or right, which in turn leads to an enormous amount of leaps of faith. For example in one level you are on top of a cliff in a cave, you cannot see anything below you but the only way to go is down. So you go down and are on another level of the cave, again you see an opening in the floor, and the assumption is to go do...

Someone put a lot of love into this game and it shows. Its literally a trip through gamings golden (and not so golden) eras. You play as a pixel who wants to see what he's all about, so he traverses through levels going from as early as the atari 2600 & zx spectrum up to the mid nineties with mega drive and snes. What impresses me most is the care he put into making the graphics (and the music) sync up with the systems they represent. Before I knew what soundfonts were I would wonder why SNES games sounded different from Genesis. Or notice that SNES had 256 colors while Genesis had 64. He captures all that, and it is impressive all the way to the beginning. Great job! The detail you put into your work did not go unnoticed. Oh yeah, did I mention it's fun to play? Like a retro super meat boy. All fans of SMB and videogame history should LOVE this game.

[list] [*]The overall concept is great [*]Gameplay is simple yet fun [*]The soundtrack is awesome! [*]Nostalgic [*]I actually like that there are no checkpoints & that spikes/water can instantly kill you - That's what makes the game challenging. I can see why it may be frustrating to some but it's a true representation of gaming on older systems. If you can accept that you are going to die [b]alot[/b], I would recommend this game. [/list]

For me, I didn't receive the nostalgia effect as I expected. It just feels like another modern 8-bit platformer where each level has a different theme. The player mechanics never seemed to change on each machine, breaking the illusion you're actually playing on a different platform, if that makes sense. So in the end it just felt like I was playing a bog-standard platformer with uninteresting level design and a box-shaped character. If you do like pixel art platformers, and don't really care for the nostalgia aspect, then you might still enjoy this. If you're expecting to feel like you're playing on the machine the theme is telling you it is, then you will probably be disappointed like myself. Overall, Life of Pixel does have an appealing design, and I liked the menu layout where you can pick the platform and level. My USB snes controller (Buffalo) was picked up automatically which was a huge plus, too.

Not for the faint of heart, for those who expect a checkpoint, or those who can't beat an emulator without the constant use of save states. Life of Pixel is remniscent of the days when console games didn't have battery backup for saved game profiles, it uses the elements of game design to teach the player how to play the game, and even mirrors some of the graphical glitches present in old consoles. For someone like myself who started with an Intellivision, and played various Apple ][, DOS, NES, SNES, Atari, Colecovision, etc., I felt right at home with this game right out of the box. Literally everything about this game was well engineered to mimic the feel of retro gaming, and for that it serves it's purpose extremely well, better than most games that attempt to be "retro". I highly recommend this game for anyone who has played lots of old platformers, but I do not recommend it for those who have only played modern games and expect a pat on the back.