11 years ago, I reviewed a fun little battling game called Pixel Tactics. With some great retro inspired graphics, Pixel Tactics went on to have a pretty great run with multiple expansions and even a Mega Man retheme.
Fast forward to today, and publisher Level 99 Games has breathed some new life into this game with their launch of Super Pixel Tactics on Gamefound. Boasting not only updated art and graphic design, but also a storage system and even solo play. Could this be the refresh people have been waiting for?
Gameplay Overview:
I covered the gameplay in detail back in 2014 when I first reviewed Pixel Tactics. If you want to know the full ins and outs, check out my review here. But the short of it is that each player chooses a leader card and places them in the middle of what will be a 3×3 grid.
Each round is divided into 3 waves, where players can take actions with the 3 cards on the top row of their grid (and then the middle row in wave 2 and the bottom row in wave 3).
A player will get two actions each wave. These range from playing a hero, attacking, casting a spell, using an order card, or drawing a card. When a hero takes damage equal to their health, they are flipped over and become a corpse, with an action required to clear that space to be reused by a different hero.
The goal is to reduce your opponent’s leader to zero health. Do so and you win.
Updated Game Impressions:
Even after more than a decade, I still find Pixel Tactics enjoyable. The gameplay has aged remarkably well, with a fast paced back and forth duel between players. With that in mind, I’m not going to spend much time talking about the core gameplay, as you can just read my original review for that.
Instead, let’s talk about what’s new in Super Pixel Tactics. First, it has upgraded card art and design. The original graphic design was fine, but this new look has really elevated the experience. The first game had a bit of “icon soup,” where they tried to make icons for each character’s power. This was a noble idea, but it just didn’t work. There were so many different icons, they kind of lost all meaning, and I always just referred to the text.
The soup has been dumped in this new version for more streamlined visuals. The text is giving more room to breathe, and the icons have been reduced to a handful that show the general theme of the power (attack, spell, etc). So top marks from me on the card refresh.
But what’s most interesting to me is the new solo gameplay mode. Over the past few years, I’ve really gone all in on solo game play, especially ones that don’t take a ton of time to setup and get going. Level 99 emailed over a PnP sample of their new solo mode, and I kind of dig it.
It turns the game into a boss fight, but the boss is divided up into 9 or so parts, each of which fits into the 3×3 grid of the core gameplay. So, instead of targeting a unique hero, you are targeting part of the monster. The sample monster has a Plated Belly, a Shield Claw, and a Heavy Claw in its front row. This gave it a bit of offense and defense. The Plated Belly only served to protect the cards behind it, but the Heavy Claw could put out some punishment.
While you’ll need to chop off pieces of the monster to ultimately kill it, the Trussavore has a heart in the center of its back row. You’ll need to expose that to take it down. Most pieces on the monster will actually regenerate after you kill it, so those Gilded Teeth you chopped off on the way to the heart will grow back in 3 turns to annoy you again.
In addition to attacks and spells from the monster parts, the monster also has a set of special abilities. At the start of each of its turns, you roll a d3 and activate one of its powers. These will help it regrow parts, damage all your heroes, or force you to discard cards. This helps even the odds of an AI monster fighting a living player.
The gameplay in general reminds me a bit of Ashes Reborn: Red Rains, where you have a dueling game shifted into a solo game and instead of fighting another army, you are fighting a big monster with various parts. While this was only a limited sample to try out, I think it worked well, and I really want to try the full mode and some other bosses. Adding on this mode definitely gives Pixel Tactics a lot more legs.
Final Thoughts:
While the new Super Pixel Tactics has come a long way from its tiny, $15 filler game box, this upgraded version provides a much better experience (albeit at a higher price tag too). The better graphics, the storage box, and the solo mode elevate the gameplay into something that will see a lot more table time.
If you are interested in checking this one out, there is still a few more days left on its gameound campaign.
Source: Board Game Quest
