One day a green pixel decided he was tired of being part of the crowd and ventured off into the wide world on his own.  He found a video game museum and decided to have a 2-D platforming adventure through various 8- and 16-bit gaming computers and consoles.  Join Pixel on a trip down memory lane in this downloadable Wii U title.

The object in each level is to collect all the diamonds, which will make a door open somewhere in the stage.  Enter it to beat the level.  You’ll have to avoid obstacles like water and spikes, as well as a variety of enemies.  You can take two hits from monsters before losing, but a brush with spikes or water will kill you in one hit.  Pixel can jump and double jump, and later on he’ll be able to use items like bombs to blow up certain walls.  Find the professor pixel and talk to him to find out the controls and learn hints on where secret items are.

Each set of eight levels represents a different console or computer from the 80’s and early 90’s.  You start out on black and white single screens, and then move onto the limited colors of the Atari 2600.  Later you’ll experience the iconic 8-bit NES and green and white graphics of the Game Boy.  Towards the end you’ll venture into 16-bit gaming with the SNES and Amiga PC. In between are a lot of computers I’ve never heard of.  I think this game was made in Europe, so a lot of the gaming PCs featured in this game were more popular there, like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where Rare got its start.  I’m surprised they were able to use the names, likenesses, and even sound effects from the original consoles, as I would think there would be some copyright issues.  Before starting each set of levels, they also have some facts about each console, too.

Aside from diamonds, you can also find hidden secrets in nearly every stage.  There are invisible doorways and portals in walls that can take you to secret areas where you can find hidden chips and snack food items.  Collect enough and you can unlock secret console stages.  I haven’t been able to unlock any myself, but I believe a couple are the SEGA Master System and Genesis (Mega Drive).  The game also saves your best times in each level as well as what secrets you’ve found.  There are also dozens of achievements to get, too.

Unfortunately, the game has some problems as well.  While it starts off being fairly easy, it gets notoriously hard later on.  Most of the difficulty comes from cheap deaths like not being able to see where you are going (even though you can look around), or surprise spikes that pop out of the ground.  Dying can get especially annoying in later rounds where you have multiple screens to navigate, and you have to start over collecting diamonds if you lose.  But if you don’t mind annoyingly difficult games, you may want to try this one out anyway.

Kid Factor:

Life of Pixel is rated E with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence.  If you get hit and lose, your pixel will just make an ugly face and explode into a bunch of little pixels, but that’s it.  Reading skill is helpful for the text and menus, but the game is pretty easy to figure out just by playing.  Younger gamers may get frustrated at the more difficult higher stages.  The game could be considered somewhat educational since it has facts and history on each console you play in.  It might also be a good way to discuss with your kids what games were like when you were little.

Tags: Game Reviews