Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic Review

We decided to review Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic. This very nerdy Indie RPG would have fitted in the Rouge-like category of games, nowadays called Rougelite games. Those are very popular with users in their twenties and thirties today. It will be released on 6th February 2015 for PC, Mac and Linux on the Steam platform. The Publisher is “Headup Games” and the Developers are the pretty geeky guys of “The Bitfather”.  This fact is proven by the very funny Video “The Making of Pixel Heroes”.

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The game is a sort of Dungeon Crawler and reminds us of the classical 80s RPGs that were played on the C64, Amiga and Atari. It also has a touch of old school JRPG’s. The pixel graphics are kept very simple and the view from the side in a kind of cycle system which occurs while you are either in the town, in mob fights or in the overland mode is well-arranged. The typical 8-Bit sound is annoying on the one hand but on the other hand it can be seen as trademark of the genre.

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Pixel Heroes is a Single Player Game where you walk around in a party of three characters. When interacting with NPCs the dialogues are hilarious and the NPC’s names are out of this world. Of course the game is based on the principle of looting and leveling if you defeat an enemy you will gain items and XP.

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Those items are randomly generated and you will find their names and features just crazy. Naturally you will also find a large amount of weapons and magic spells in the form of books. The features and symbols of the items are quite complex to understand and you might need the help page for clarification. In the course of the game the player is able to unlock up to thirty different heroes with again ridiculous names. Pixel Heroes contains three campaigns with different Boss Fights at the end.

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Another key component of the game is the Permadeath feature which gives the game the right old school feeling. We all know that in current single player video games the quick safe and quick load function make games almost impossible to lose. So the developers included the Permadeath feature which means that once a hero loses its entire HP he is dead until you revive him in the town, unless that happens he is headed to the graveyard. If all three heroes die the game is over. Afterwards on the graveyard the player can read a summary of all the heroes’ statistics.

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All in all Pixel Heroes is a nice look back at the great 80s RPGs and it will only cost you 9, 99€. This game is definitely not for beginners although it is very entertaining and funny if you know the pop cultural references and you understand the satire about 80s and 90s RPGs. We definitely recommend you to check out this great game. You can get it on Steam here.

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Tested and written by Lias Kudla.

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