Deliberately difficult games are an interesting bunch- by their very concept, you’d think someone was insane, and yet they enjoy considerable success in the marketplace. Maybe it’s because their consumers are equally crazy, but my theory is that they ride the same wavelength that boosts horror entertainment, namely its reliance on the reward system- when we get scared by something frightening, the resultant dopamine rush tinges the whole affair with a coat of positive recall. Likewise, successfully completing an arduous task after multiple deaths can be the equivalent of an Intropin injection, setting-off a positive feedback loop in the brain that encourages gamers to punish themselves….maybe the older generations are right and gaming is an addiction.
My ramblings aside, They Bleed Pixels is one such entry in the platforming subshoot of this genre, albeit with a beat’em up compartment courtesy of a half-baked melee system. The question is, is it worth it for casuals to venture into ala Super Meat Boy or strictly for enthusiasts? I’m afraid I have to go with the latter, but for the longer answer, read on!
The story…exists. Through very short cutscenes interspersed at the start of each chapter, you get a narrative that hinges on a little girl. She has been assigned to a new boarding school where a demonic tome (basically a discount Necronomicon) mutates her at night. It’s not made clear whether her consequent nocturnal adventures are fever dreams or interdimensional escapades the way Lovecraft’s protagonists were sometimes involved in, but regardless, it’s not important because no importance is placed on it- it’s merely an excuse for the game to take hold.
And on that note, let’s talk about the gameplay- as a platformer, They Bleed Pixels has your typical high leaps, short hops, and sliding. Those controls are intuitive for the most part save anything to do with walls- most vertical barriers can be grasped onto, with the Girl slowly slipping unless you bound off it perpendicularly or horizontally. The biggest issue I ran into was how inconsistent the double jump worked: sometimes the game would register me as having already done the first leap (signified by an instantaneous “swoosh” from departure), leaving me with only the second, while other times I could successfully do both. To be clear, these kinds of inconsistencies are present in every parkour-based title (including my beloved Assassin’s Creed), but it gets very infuriating in They Bleed Pixels due to the demanding punctuality of the gameplay. Timing is everything, and one screw-up or one misfired trajectory will cost you and force you to restart. And given the already onerous nature of the game, you can imagine how frustrating these lapses in the coding get.
Besides that, you also have a combat system courtesy of developer Spooky Squid Games wanting to throw-in some beat’em up action. Unfortunately, to a certain degree, it’s more irksome than my aforementioned lamentations about the wall movement due to arbitrary handicaps that were put on it. You can slice, kick, burst transversally, and ground pound, but every single one of those functions is synced to the same button, which you’ll find leads to confusion in intentions very fast; that is, the Girl sometimes doesn’t register what you want to do. Trying to hit an enemy to your left may result in you accelerating instead, priming you for a quick counterattack; attempting to calcitrate a ghoul into his companions behind him may be replaced with you simply slashing. I really don’t get why the kick, in particular, wasn’t tied to another key; the intro screen literally encourages you to play with a controller, yet the devs don’t even utilize three of the four digital action prompts. Maybe they did it for the sake of making things more difficult, but that seems silly given how mentally testing the overall contraption is.
On the topic of difficulty, I was genuinely shocked that They Bleed Pixels didn’t have an insta-respawn option. Considering the sheer amount of instances that you will perish (or await perishment), having to spend even an extra second+ biding for the game to reset gets aggravating, though I was appreciative of checkpoints going back to the actual moment you died (animations/placements of the other beasties, et. al. in place) rather than a similar spacetime juncture where nothing you did beforehand is remembered.
Other issues with the game include transitions between moves lacking a smoothness seen in alternative fighting games, and your standard enemies having too much health to warrant the endeavor at least being fun hack-and-slash-style. Credit where credit is due, there is a decent diversity of antagonists, each requiring a slight variation on your standard melee moves to best, and I liked how the combo dial declined numerically rather than immediately dropping to zero as tends to be the default. However, I can’t say you’ll look forward to most hostile interactions.
Fear not, not everything is negative! One of the implementations I really enjoyed was the aforestated checkpoint system - rather than have a flag-esque one like most platforming games, They Bleed Pixels opts for a meter that you build-up via dicing enemies or collecting floating red orbs: once fully charged it’ll auto-generate a savepoint as long as the Girl is standing completely still and not within the vicinity of any threat (undead or inanimate). This might seem like it could get vexing, and I’d be lying if I said there weren’t moments where I hated where I put my station, but overall I gotta admit it was pretty genius. Not only does it encourage you to engage in fights, but it also concocts yet another blast of drug-induced pleasure to the reward system via granting a vitality haven for completing a toilsome area. In addition, you get some sadistically brilliant design choices in the layout of the floors: places will be set-up so that you have just enough opportunities to earn experience, as well as stopgaps in place to prevent you from spamming save spots whenever you can (ex. a blade hidden in an adjacent ceiling).
Really, my praise for the level design applies to the game as a whole. Yes, there were hundreds of times where I was strongly tempted to chuck my controller at the monitor; however, I can’t deny that there was thought put into the craftsmanship. Whether it was placing certain villain varieties at certain points to counter specific strategies or arranging obstacles in a way that you had to do precise maneuvers, it was all callously well-done.
Graphically, They Bleed Pixels lives up to its name by indulging in an artstyle wherein all beings look like they’re composed of little dots. It’s not blurry enough to warrant being labeled a throwback to the 16-bit realm ala Shovel Knight, but instead is its own thing, more reminiscent of an HD-version of early-2000s computer games. Blood, in particular, is glorious to behold, with enemies (or yourself!) bleeding multitudinous pictels of claret tears when cleaved or obliterated, the ink drenching the environs around you (though sadly not any avatars). Small details like little splashes when you step on a crimson floor or specific body parts flying depending on how an enemy was knocked into spikes are worthy of praise.
Unfortunately, there are some downsides. For starters, that pixelation can cause issues with buzzsaws- the white boundary of your character model is so fuzzy that you are not able to precisely tell where it ends and the silvery rotundness of the cutter begins, leading to another source of anger when you’re haphazardly propelled in spite of you thinking you’re safely adjacent to the trap. All other objects you’ll witness seem like pre-created items that were pulled from the Microsoft XNA engine library. And the monsters you’ll face aren’t distinct in the slightest. I’ve heard many claim that there was a Lovecraftian influence on the arthouse, but I couldn’t see it- the deities and leviathans of the Cthulhu Mythos were the epitome of incomprehensible awe; They Bleed Pixels’s are even less unique than the ones in Ghosts 'n Goblins. Backgrounds also tend to be relatively simple (though gorgeously made) paintings that only alter when you fall to your last hitpoint (becoming redder).
But as an overall package, the gothic vibe, cool colors, and Clock Tower-esque splendour of the cutscenes will more than make-up for any visual deficiencies.
Sound is arguably as barren as the story. There’s no voice acting minus the scream of the Girl when she meets a demise (why they couldn’t program more than one vociferation I can’t say), effects like the swipe of your claws against a body or the woosh of your springing are singular, and I can’t recall anything else standing out.
The music by Shaun Hatton is catchy enough. He’s evidently going for those old-school, arcadey beats that would pulse through mall corners back in the day, and it succeeds in enlivening every level without adding to the wrath that will bubble inside you as you bite the dust again and again and again.
In terms of whether or not I recommend They Bleed Pixels, listen, the target audience is obvious- you know who you are, and this is another title worth adding to your backlog. The main story provides enough content for your money, there are a series of bonus stages with unique reskins (i.e. Van Gogh’s Starry Night), and the masochists among you can even replay areas to collect all the tomes and spheres.
On the other hand, for those who are looking for an introduction to this niche genre, I can’t say I nominate it, mainly because of the flaws with the wall jumping and lack of quick respawns. Those may seem like small gripes, but for games like this, they add to the pain gauge very quickly, and unless you’re used to the brutal machinations of these platformers, you’re better off playing something less exasperating.
I’m proud that I managed to beat They Bleed Pixels, holding it up as a Badge of Pride, but boy was it a metacarpal-aching journey.
My ramblings aside, They Bleed Pixels is one such entry in the platforming subshoot of this genre, albeit with a beat’em up compartment courtesy of a half-baked melee system. The question is, is it worth it for casuals to venture into ala Super Meat Boy or strictly for enthusiasts? I’m afraid I have to go with the latter, but for the longer answer, read on!
The story…exists. Through very short cutscenes interspersed at the start of each chapter, you get a narrative that hinges on a little girl. She has been assigned to a new boarding school where a demonic tome (basically a discount Necronomicon) mutates her at night. It’s not made clear whether her consequent nocturnal adventures are fever dreams or interdimensional escapades the way Lovecraft’s protagonists were sometimes involved in, but regardless, it’s not important because no importance is placed on it- it’s merely an excuse for the game to take hold.
And on that note, let’s talk about the gameplay- as a platformer, They Bleed Pixels has your typical high leaps, short hops, and sliding. Those controls are intuitive for the most part save anything to do with walls- most vertical barriers can be grasped onto, with the Girl slowly slipping unless you bound off it perpendicularly or horizontally. The biggest issue I ran into was how inconsistent the double jump worked: sometimes the game would register me as having already done the first leap (signified by an instantaneous “swoosh” from departure), leaving me with only the second, while other times I could successfully do both. To be clear, these kinds of inconsistencies are present in every parkour-based title (including my beloved Assassin’s Creed), but it gets very infuriating in They Bleed Pixels due to the demanding punctuality of the gameplay. Timing is everything, and one screw-up or one misfired trajectory will cost you and force you to restart. And given the already onerous nature of the game, you can imagine how frustrating these lapses in the coding get.
Besides that, you also have a combat system courtesy of developer Spooky Squid Games wanting to throw-in some beat’em up action. Unfortunately, to a certain degree, it’s more irksome than my aforementioned lamentations about the wall movement due to arbitrary handicaps that were put on it. You can slice, kick, burst transversally, and ground pound, but every single one of those functions is synced to the same button, which you’ll find leads to confusion in intentions very fast; that is, the Girl sometimes doesn’t register what you want to do. Trying to hit an enemy to your left may result in you accelerating instead, priming you for a quick counterattack; attempting to calcitrate a ghoul into his companions behind him may be replaced with you simply slashing. I really don’t get why the kick, in particular, wasn’t tied to another key; the intro screen literally encourages you to play with a controller, yet the devs don’t even utilize three of the four digital action prompts. Maybe they did it for the sake of making things more difficult, but that seems silly given how mentally testing the overall contraption is.
On the topic of difficulty, I was genuinely shocked that They Bleed Pixels didn’t have an insta-respawn option. Considering the sheer amount of instances that you will perish (or await perishment), having to spend even an extra second+ biding for the game to reset gets aggravating, though I was appreciative of checkpoints going back to the actual moment you died (animations/placements of the other beasties, et. al. in place) rather than a similar spacetime juncture where nothing you did beforehand is remembered.
Other issues with the game include transitions between moves lacking a smoothness seen in alternative fighting games, and your standard enemies having too much health to warrant the endeavor at least being fun hack-and-slash-style. Credit where credit is due, there is a decent diversity of antagonists, each requiring a slight variation on your standard melee moves to best, and I liked how the combo dial declined numerically rather than immediately dropping to zero as tends to be the default. However, I can’t say you’ll look forward to most hostile interactions.
Fear not, not everything is negative! One of the implementations I really enjoyed was the aforestated checkpoint system - rather than have a flag-esque one like most platforming games, They Bleed Pixels opts for a meter that you build-up via dicing enemies or collecting floating red orbs: once fully charged it’ll auto-generate a savepoint as long as the Girl is standing completely still and not within the vicinity of any threat (undead or inanimate). This might seem like it could get vexing, and I’d be lying if I said there weren’t moments where I hated where I put my station, but overall I gotta admit it was pretty genius. Not only does it encourage you to engage in fights, but it also concocts yet another blast of drug-induced pleasure to the reward system via granting a vitality haven for completing a toilsome area. In addition, you get some sadistically brilliant design choices in the layout of the floors: places will be set-up so that you have just enough opportunities to earn experience, as well as stopgaps in place to prevent you from spamming save spots whenever you can (ex. a blade hidden in an adjacent ceiling).
Really, my praise for the level design applies to the game as a whole. Yes, there were hundreds of times where I was strongly tempted to chuck my controller at the monitor; however, I can’t deny that there was thought put into the craftsmanship. Whether it was placing certain villain varieties at certain points to counter specific strategies or arranging obstacles in a way that you had to do precise maneuvers, it was all callously well-done.
Graphically, They Bleed Pixels lives up to its name by indulging in an artstyle wherein all beings look like they’re composed of little dots. It’s not blurry enough to warrant being labeled a throwback to the 16-bit realm ala Shovel Knight, but instead is its own thing, more reminiscent of an HD-version of early-2000s computer games. Blood, in particular, is glorious to behold, with enemies (or yourself!) bleeding multitudinous pictels of claret tears when cleaved or obliterated, the ink drenching the environs around you (though sadly not any avatars). Small details like little splashes when you step on a crimson floor or specific body parts flying depending on how an enemy was knocked into spikes are worthy of praise.
Unfortunately, there are some downsides. For starters, that pixelation can cause issues with buzzsaws- the white boundary of your character model is so fuzzy that you are not able to precisely tell where it ends and the silvery rotundness of the cutter begins, leading to another source of anger when you’re haphazardly propelled in spite of you thinking you’re safely adjacent to the trap. All other objects you’ll witness seem like pre-created items that were pulled from the Microsoft XNA engine library. And the monsters you’ll face aren’t distinct in the slightest. I’ve heard many claim that there was a Lovecraftian influence on the arthouse, but I couldn’t see it- the deities and leviathans of the Cthulhu Mythos were the epitome of incomprehensible awe; They Bleed Pixels’s are even less unique than the ones in Ghosts 'n Goblins. Backgrounds also tend to be relatively simple (though gorgeously made) paintings that only alter when you fall to your last hitpoint (becoming redder).
But as an overall package, the gothic vibe, cool colors, and Clock Tower-esque splendour of the cutscenes will more than make-up for any visual deficiencies.
Sound is arguably as barren as the story. There’s no voice acting minus the scream of the Girl when she meets a demise (why they couldn’t program more than one vociferation I can’t say), effects like the swipe of your claws against a body or the woosh of your springing are singular, and I can’t recall anything else standing out.
The music by Shaun Hatton is catchy enough. He’s evidently going for those old-school, arcadey beats that would pulse through mall corners back in the day, and it succeeds in enlivening every level without adding to the wrath that will bubble inside you as you bite the dust again and again and again.
In terms of whether or not I recommend They Bleed Pixels, listen, the target audience is obvious- you know who you are, and this is another title worth adding to your backlog. The main story provides enough content for your money, there are a series of bonus stages with unique reskins (i.e. Van Gogh’s Starry Night), and the masochists among you can even replay areas to collect all the tomes and spheres.
On the other hand, for those who are looking for an introduction to this niche genre, I can’t say I nominate it, mainly because of the flaws with the wall jumping and lack of quick respawns. Those may seem like small gripes, but for games like this, they add to the pain gauge very quickly, and unless you’re used to the brutal machinations of these platformers, you’re better off playing something less exasperating.
I’m proud that I managed to beat They Bleed Pixels, holding it up as a Badge of Pride, but boy was it a metacarpal-aching journey.