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written by Attis.

Have you always wanted to own some land and create your own farm? In this cute pixelated world with over thousands of land plots, this dream may come true! Pixels is an enchanting world of animated pixel characters and farms that has recently announced it will move over to the Ronin Blockchain. Boasting a total of over  900,000 players, this game is free to play with aspects of multiplayer and single player campaigns including the ability to own your own land and wear other NFTs as your character. Currently, the game is available through your favourite web browser and players are able to create accounts using their email or wallets lowering the barrier to access.There is only a limited amount of lore available for Pixels, which is based around the main city called Terra Villa. The characters within this world can own land and farm on these lands. Resources gained from the land can be used to create items that can be sold.

From farm hand to farm owner

When a player first loads into the game they are on a small piece of land with an NPC called Barney who teaches you the basic principles of farming. This includes sowing popberry seeds, watering them and even accelerating their growth using fertiliser. Once the first steps of the tutorial are completed, the player is teleported to the main city of Terra Villa. Here they will be greeted by Ranger Dale in the PLOT office which is the place responsible for land ownership. Players can buy and rent land from other players in this location.

The tutorial continues by getting the player to explore the general store where players can buy most items necessary for the game. After this the player is prompted to explore several different options for quests to continue playing the game. However, the player has to make sure they are actively reading the instructions from the NPC as skipping this will leave them confused most of the time.

Once the player has completed the initial introduction quests, they can venture to the town hall and meet Mayor Dave who can give them additional quests or they can be on their way to explore other land plots where they can participate in an activity called sharecropping which allows them to farm and harvest using other land plots, however the land owner will get their fair share of the resources gained. This provides an incentive for players to own land themselves as they can earn resources even whilst they are not actively playing.

The main core gameplay loop is gathering resources such as wood and popberries and then transforming these into different objects that can be sold for berry or pixels depending on the item. Higher rarity land plots can yield rarer resources that are important for crafting objects later in the game.

Is Pixels the cream of the crop?

From an aesthetic perspective, Pixels delivers a visually pleasing farming experience that can be shared with friends and family. Although the sign up process for the game is seamless, the introduction to the game past the initial tutorial with Barney lacks some simple implementations that could improve the overall player experience. An example of an improvement that could be made here is to give visual cues to the player as to where to go for their next objective.

When looking at the graphics of Pixels, this is really well done for a pixelated game and the effects they have for different buildings and actions are smooth. In addition to this, players can wear partnered NFT collections as their character which allow for variation in the game and these are also well implemented.

Analysing the sound design of the game, this has also been well implemented. Approaching different buildings starts to change the background music as well as the sound effects that add to the player’s experience. The overall background music fits the game well however it does get a bit monotone after listening to it after a while especially considering how many hours the players will be inside the game if they want to complete all of the quests.

Coming to the most important part of this review, the gameplay. Overall if you enjoy this genre of game, Pixels does a great job of having a gameplay loop that keeps the player active. However, one of the introduction quests takes a total of 6 hours to complete which can be too much for most players in the casual gaming genre. This coupled with the lack of visual guidance in the introductory quests, this is the biggest let down for Pixels. Although the whitepaper gives tips and tricks for people to complete the quests, finding out that the winery quest takes so long to complete that is made me stop playing.

Overall, I would rate this game a 5.5 out of 10, the score here derives from having a good first impression but does fall down due to the lack of visual guidance in the introductory game loop. Their overall game loop is done well however can become time consuming and lacklustre for players who enjoy more action based games. On the other hand, there are plenty of functions and extra activities being built out in Pixels, this is likely to contribute to the players experience and improve the game in the future.

Score: 5.5/10

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