Life of Pixel Review

Short, annoying, and terribly designed, Life of Pixel is a game that should be avoided. That is the best way I can describe this game. It has only 64 levels, all which can be beaten easily in under a minute by most people. The enemy patterns are all the same, the graphics and sound are just ok, and I beat the game easily in one sitting.

First of all, the platforming is the heart, and this game cannot even get that right. The character has a weird jump, and is very floaty. You can do a double jump and can usually hit the top of the stage on a regular level. This makes the platforming on some of the levels pretty easy, as you can basically float with your giant jumps across the level. The character moves a little too fast as well, making enclosed levels a real problem. The cramped levels pose another problem, with your character hitting the top, and falling down into water, lava or an enemy. The character definitely needs to be a little more grounded, and the levels need to differ in design to accommodate to the character.

The problem is that most of the levels are often times cramped and swarmed with enemies, making them impossible. It wouldn’t be bad if the levels were genuinely hard, but the enemies blindside you, and make getting through them extremely frustrating. The gigantic levels are also genuinely awful because of one enemy who is basically impossible to pass. For example, there was one level where you had to climb a ladder, but there was one enemy who was standing directly over the ladder. This level took me literally 50 tries, until the one time I lured him away from the ladder. A level should be passed based on skill, not by the luck of the character movement patterns.

In Life of Pixel, you travel across 8 different consoles, and each console has 8 levels. The consoles are all fairly old, such as the Atari, Commodore, and the NES. The graphics and art style change, along with the music, but the one constant, is the awful level design. These levels could take a short or a long time to complete depending on the number of blindsiding enemies. Even so, I finished the game in one sitting, and it was quite unfulfilling.

Life of Pixel was short, and not that good. Bad platforming, annoying level design, and enemies that blindside you at every corner mar what could have been a great platformer. Overall, I was disappointed with Life of Pixel. Even with its low price tag, Life of Pixel isn’t worth your time or money. This pixel should have stayed with the crowd.