Pixel Art Games Recommendations (From an Artist)
I am making this post because these games are on a huge summer sale on Steam right now and for a few more days until 5th of July. The games on this list are heavily discounted, many of them on this list from 50-70% off.
A lot of these games are well known but if you are a casual gamer, you may have missed some. If you would like more detailed reviews including performance I recommend TotalBiscuit.
FEZ
Starting with my personal favorite from this list. This is a puzzle platformer, with amazing and unique atmosphere. It has just the right amount of cute, with a very distinct pixel art style.
I particularly enjoyed how the game's areas have special color themes, music and different environment themes (like forest, port, town).
The puzzles start with very easy and moves to very challenging fairly. You are free to explore however you want and thankfully there are many places to go to.
(And the owls are just so cute!)
Risk of Rain
This is a sci-fi platformer with lots of action. As an artist I am amazed by the number of unique enemies, many items to collect and awesome fighting effects. The art style is consistent and still unique across all fighting areas.
The animation skills are to a new level in this game. I am not fluent in music terminology, but I have listened to it on repeat countless of times and am still mesmerized by it.
Necrodancer
If you want to see epic dancing skeletons, this is the game for you! A fun rhythm game with replayability and many challenges to try out.
All floor and wall textures are very simplistic, but they work as a perfect contrast to the colorful dancing enemies. Also the checkered floor colors add greatly to the rhythm experience.
Most importantly, even with very limited artwork size, each enemy and boss has a unique personality.
Rogue Legacy
This is a platformer set in a procedurally generated castle . For me the charm is in the characters.
" Each time you die, your child will succeed you."
Each character unique traits, sometimes good and sometimes bad (like color-blind). Also this game has an interesting combination of pixel art and some high resolution user interface graphics like health bar.
The Binding of Issac: Rebirth
This game is not for kids.
The darkest game on this list, but really fun. It is a RPG shooter. If you think pixel art is always cute, this will change your mind.
Some of the monsters are grotesque, to put simply, but beautifully executed. It's really fun to collect the items (and there are Many ), some of which are awesome minions that follow you. I have not seen anything similar to this artstyle yet, it is a mixture of very detailed backgrounds and mostly simplified monsters.
There are also older older versions that are cheaper.
Some other games for you to check out
Super Meat Boy
A platformer with 300 levels, slightly gruesome (pg-13)
Ftl
Sci-fi space ships game, a mixture of high resolution with pixel art.
Papers Please
A simulation game of checking documents. Tragic realism.
Party Hard
You are a serial killer. (Again- not for kids)
Gungeon
Pixel art guns. Many, many (usual) guns.
Starbound
2d sandbox in space. lots of planets to explore and many things to collect.
Evoland
Game about the evolution of games, starts with pixel art games.
Don't Starve
Not pixel art but my all time favorite game. It is a survival game (Currently heavily discounted)
If you love playing games I highly recommend checking Humble Bundle regularly for some awesome deals.
All the images were taken from the store pages of the games.
What are you favorite pixel art games? :D
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Man thank you very much. I love these games.
I hope this post makes more people try them out :D
@kristyglas .. that is such a cute list. You actually played all of those while making this list ? hard to imagine going thru all of it.
Some of these are from 2013 :D But pixel art doesn't go out of "fashion". And Starbound was early access for more than 3 years even though it says it came out 2016.
Also some of these I tried from friends, and plan to get eventually for myself. I also have Don't starve since early access and got Don't starve together for free. ^^
I haven't played Gungeon and Party Hard, but definitely want to and watched people play. I often watch Jessy Cox ( a gamer). He played Party Hard.
And I got a quite few games in crazy good Humble Bundles.
I got Fez and Ftl like that: http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/60946676059/introducing-humble-indie-bundle-9 (this was long ago) Also got bundles with Papers please and Evoland 2. The latest bundle I bought is phone games Rogue-Likes at 5.28 euro 9 games
I usually wait for winter or summer sales as I don't have enough time to play lately. (spring and autumn sales are much smaller)
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Thank you ^ ^ Will definitely check it out.
And yeah I do pixel art :)
Cool )