McPixel Review

Obviously the graphics are nothing special, and there are only two songs in the game, one for the menus, and one for the gameplay. These songs are catchy, but get frustratingly repetitive after a while. This is all to be expected from a game which is a mere fifty-nine megabyte download though. With so few assets it came as no surprise that I had no performance issues when playing. There is a surprising amount of content in here for such a small game however. In addition to the main game there is an option to download new levels totally free. You can also play Endless Mode, where the levels just keep coming at you until you get bored. Another neat thing to play around in the game is the ability to change the filtering options. These change the way the game looks, without changing the gameplay. It even shows a frames per second counter in the top left corner while you are selecting, seemingly poking fun at itself for drastically decreasing the frame rate when some filters are activated.

You can check how well you are doing on the leaderboards. They track how long you have spent in each level, and how many times you had to visit that level before you completed it. Upon completion of a level you earn a silver or gold award depending on how fast you complete it. You can revisit past levels by simply selecting them from the menu, or by playing them in Endless Mode. If you select completed levels from the story menu, your job is to “Find all gags” rather than to save the day. Here you beat the level by finding the specific joke outcome of each situation, rather than dealing with the explosives.

McPixel is an enjoyable little indie game. It is quite short, but the low price point seems reasonable for the content. The humor is generally good and well delivered, but once you have found the gags in each level there is no real reason to come back to it. In short bursts, it is fun, and the segmented style of the main mode complements this. If you are not the sort of person who is into slapstick and often rude humor though, it is perhaps to be avoided.