Review: Life of Pixel

The life of a pixel must be disappointing. It's an existence of crushing uniformity - a constant battle to stand out against similarly coloured peers in a scene that someone will only glance at for a moment.

Even Super Icon's Life of Pixelhas very little to do with pixels. Instead, the game's subject is vintage gaming, recreating the look and feel of games from various eras of electronic entertainment from the Sinclair ZX81 and Atari 2600, through to the Spectrum, BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC 64, and more.

Each console feels different from the others, despite each one offering a uniform eight levels to play through. This is because Super Icon has tried very hard to capture the essence of what made the sprite-based games of the time so great to play.

Older formats are presented in monochrome, while more recent ones contains garish colour mixes. Many also take place on a single screen, while others contain multiple screens and moving backgrounds with parallax scrolling.

Two-dimensional
The gameplay also recalls the way games used to be in the good old days, in that it's utterly punishing.

It may only provide simple platforming - in which you avoid water traps, spikes, and meandering enemies while snatching up jewels to unlock a door - but it's relentless.

This is in part due to the floaty physics and awkward double-jump mechanic. But it's also a matter of design - each level is built to lull you into thinking its easy, when it's anything but.

It may be short, reasonably simple, and rather straightforward in execution, but Life of Pixel is an enjoyable homage to the ancestors of today's games.