Pixel Gladiator

Hard day at the office? Then jump into TV show phenomenon “Pixel Gladiator”. The show where viewers pay good money to watch you kill stuff. 

That is more or less the story here. Players take on waves of monsters in a side scrolling shooter, where monster death deals out money.Jump about and fire away whilst enemies try to advance both sides towards your base, and should they attack and kill you or destroy your base, it’s game over! 

In between the waves, there are opportunities to buy upgrade weapons from machine guns up to grenade launchers or you can spend it on base defence. This includes building walls either side to block out monsters, extras such as turrets on the walls, or upgrading wall strength, turret strength and rate of fire, or even an armed drone.

Yes. Its side shooter mixed with Tower Defence in a mix that actually works pretty well. 

Visuals are pixelated, cleanly rendered and overall, look great. There is a decent accompaniment with a nice retro soundtrack, and a control system that’s nicely layered out. 

Everything in this game works well. You kill constant waves of enemies, then get a boss creature every tenth wave. 3 scenario options including a base perched on 3 ledges with flying monsters to take out and a season themed Survival mode. 

For the small price of $5, you certainly get decent value for money.  Overall though, you just wish there was more.. More choice of weapons, more base upgrades and more modes. 

On top of all that, it’s biggest gripe is the TV theme in the description. You have the impression of crowds cheering, collecting prizes or even cutscenes on the game show theme, but nothing! 

In fact the only way you know it’s a game show is in the game description, and if you didn’t read that, you would be none the wiser!

It’s sad, because there is a great base game here with the opportunity to be much bigger, deeper and more driven to the TV gameshow theme,granting it way more attention and interest. 

At the moment, we just have to take it as it is. So, hopefully developers just may stay focused on improving it further with updates. 

We shall see, but for now the verdict remains.. 

Short but sweet.. 

Thanks to Drageus Games for the code.