A Pixel Story

[h1] Pixel disaster. [/h1]

Even after playing through the whole game, I cannot figure out why the developer wanted to include such awkward vertical movement mechanics in it. It feels like they literally serve no purpose and make the game difficult to enjoy. Essentially, when you perform a "jump," your character's left/right momentum gets locked for 2/3 of the jump's duration. At its core, "A Pixel Story" is a casual/exploration platformer. Most of the content is not too difficult and focuses more on the story (which didn't really feel engaging to me). But the game also has some atrocious difficulty spikes that, combined with the awkward movement mechanics, make for a very weird experience. I cannot recommend this to casual players because of said difficulty spikes, but I also cannot recommend this to players looking for a challenge because the majority of the game is still very casual-focused.

Precision platformers get away with having a brutal difficulty level through a correct combination of factors: rapid respawns, no forced waiting, short levels that are also well-designed, and extremely precise control. This game falls short in 3 of those 4 categories. The rapid respawns are decent, though there is still a bit of hesitation that can throw your timing off. Certain challenge areas will actually make you wait for quite a while for everything to either line up, or because the patterns don't take into account a good player with enough practice and skill trying to first-cycle obstacles. Many of the challenge levels are also a bit too long with a mishmash of obstacles rather that focusing on only a couple concepts and pushing them to the limits. In addition, there are a lot of BS moments with random guesswork littered in the second half of many gauntlets. Your character is slow, clunky, and has to deal with very imprecise obstacles many times. For example, a common mechanic is pushing left or right to alter your velocity from springs. The problem is that the movement is entirely momentum based, which has no business in a precision platformer. Other mech…

Pixels tell a story Every world grows from your hands Adventure takes shape

Honestly this just isn't fun. When you're in the air, you have to worry about velocity, but you have a constant speed on the ground. Pair that up with platforming that expects precision from you, and you have what may be the main problem with this game. When trying to work with the floatiness of the controls in order to land on a precarious spot, you may inadvertently run off of that ground and into a death pit as soon as you land. This isn't to mention things like springs which purposefully fling you to your death, forcing you to play trial and error with just how long/many times you should press an arrow key to make up the difference and land safely -- and this is just the beginning of the game. This game has those "hardcore gamer" challenge areas, by the way. I think I'll just go play Super Meat Boy again. I originally intended to at least complete the story of the game, but I'm not sure I can force myself to do so, nor that I want to despite only scratching the surface of the second area. There are other games to play.

A very neat gimmick and a surprisingly nice OST. Whoever designed those challenge rooms is an absolute sadist.