Retro is the brand new NEW and therefore a game entitled “Pixel People” certainly has a ton of appeal from start. Fortunately, in this case, we’re not talking about just the name that makes this game so desirable and you will see what I mean if you at least give it a try – and hopefully this Pixel People review will convince you to at least try out this little gem – it’s free of charge and only a small download on your device!
The premise of Pixel People is not the most exciting: we’re talking about a city building sim, and we’ve seen a ton of those already. What makes this particular game different is its approach to the genre: you are building an utopian civilization using your own clones, mixing DNA to find all the lost professions of the modern world and constructing buildings based on the findings you make and not by selecting stuff from a “shop”. And this is indeed something extremely interesting!
And interesting is not the only thing that comes packed with the pixelated graphics of Pixel People. The humor is at high levels wherever you look, with funny names for your citizens – for example, the Preacher’s name is Ryan Carnation (reincarnation, get it?) and my sheriff told me a witty line when I found her: “This town’s not big enough for two of us” because you literally get a single person! Really funny and keeps adding cherries on top of the icing of the cake, and we all love this great sweetness.
Words of praise aside, let’s see exactly what Pixel People is about: you start with a small area to rebuild your civilization on and from there you have to do research, mix DNA samples and try to find new jobs. Mix the Mechanic and the Mayor, and you’ll get an engineer. Mix him with the mechanic and you have a new job and so on – there are 150 possible combinations right now and I am sure that more will come with future updates. So simply trying, testing and finding these combinations is enough to get you completely hooked!
But when you find a new “job” (the result of a successful combination), it comes with an associated building, one that you have to place in your city to produce coins and look great overall. So basically, you won’t be spending a dime on new structures (except of houses, but you don’t really need a ton of those) and the entire game is about arranging your utopian city and mixing DNA samples to get your clones do all the things that you were never able to do. And no matter how you put it, this is extremely fun!
You will do a lot of tapping in Pixel People – to start up businesses, to collect hearts for special surprises and to basically keep everything going. The only thing that limits your expansion plans is the limited land that you have available to build on and expansions in space are extremely difficult. But fortunately there’s no rush to actually finish the game in 48 hours, so you’ll most likely enjoy the long journey ahead.
Visually, Pixel People is charming. All those pixelated graphics, with the hot colors and charming characters, plus the Utopia News channel that you ahve in the lower section of the screen, all these elements are charming and add value to the game. The soundtrack could’ve been a little better and a bit more retro to fit the line of the game, but you can’t complain and you’ll eventually end up turning it off to save as much battery as possible, because you have combinations to find!
In conclusion, I can say that Pixel People is an amazing game. First of all, everything about it is extremely well done and entertaining and second, the fact that it is a free game doesn’t make it less enjoyable. I never felt that there were mechanics in the game trying to force me purchase some premium currency, so you won’t get bugged with IAP purchases, which adds value to the overall quality level of the game. So if you want a fresh take on the outdated city building genre, download Pixel People and have fun playing this gem of a game!
iTunes link: Pixel People