Pix The Cat is one of the coolest games to come out in a long time. Pastagames has done a marvelous job bringing classic arcade Pac-Man styling into the modern-day while still making the game feel fresh. In the game you star as Pix, our titular cat, and progress in the “Grid of Infinity”, deeper and deeper through its nested levels. But don’t think it is some simple game where you hatch the eggs to stack up ducklings behind you. Why Pix is collecting and hatching eggs is beyond me, but you’ll quickly accept it because of just how incredibly addictive the gameplay is.
As Pix, you will have to pick up eggs in each level and drop them off at target circles to set them free. You have to do this as quickly as possible while avoiding hitting walls and obstacles that will kill your eggs and end you combo streak. You see, the entire point of Pix The Cat is very much at its core a classic arcade experience entirely based on a grid system. You want to collect and drop off eggs as quickly as possible without breaking your combo chain by dropping eggs off early on targets, boxing yourself in, or running into an enemy. Avoiding these obstacles will run up your combo meter and get you a high score when the games timer runs out. It has been a long time since I’ve seen a game based solely around earning a high score and not trying to tell some mind-bending story to help justify someones degree in creative writing.
As this is an arcade style game the difficulty will ramp up to insane levels very quickly. Instead of having the game set up between different levels like most arcade games, Pix The Cat is one large world that never ends. Each stage opens a portal into the next one (levels are nested within each other) once you collect and deposit all the eggs, but you can go back through portals into past areas. In many situations you’ll have to use these portals to go back to previous areas if you want to avoid dangers or avoid dropping off your eggs early. Not having the game break the flow between levels/areas is one of ways Pix The Cats never stops being a blast. The game will force you to always be on your toes, especially as levels can be quite different in size and shape.
As you go about collecting and dropping off eggs without taking damage, you’ll keep building your combo meter. You are going to want to fill this meter up as it will increase your score quicker, but the increase will come at a cost to the player. As you combos become longer Pix will begin to speed up, making your ability to make split-second decisions even harder. Once your combo meter is full you’ll enter a special “Fever Mode” that sees the screen go into a trippy negative color style. This special mode is not only much quicker, but also allows you to kill enemies to build even bigger point totals and is a necessity if you want to compete on the high-score leader-boards.
Another fun thing is that Pix The Cat always manages to feel fresh during each playthrough. You will get very familiar with early levels having to repeat them over-and-over again, but this allows you to figure out better paths to build bigger points. You can easily play the same amount of levels each playthrough, but earn very different point totals. Of course, when you begin to excel you’ll open up new stages within this nesting format and in turn keeping things fresh. Not only that, but you can compete against your own ghost that you set up thus making arcade mode even more fun. This also allows you to practice your paths through the levels and get that much better at the game.
Visually, Pix The Cat is a stunning display of neon lights that bombard the senses at every turn. It is very reminiscent of Pac-Man Championship Edition, but pops a lot more than that game did. Colors change and merge with the passing of each level and you will be hit with lots of images and text popping up at you almost to the point of sensory overload at points. It’s all so exciting and makes for a memorable experience whether you are playing for a few minutes or an hour or two.
Pix The Cat is already a winner, but it isn’t done with giving players a few surprises. Aside from the arcade mode, the game offers two other modes that mix things up and show just how versatile the basic gameplay is. With Laboratory mode you will guide a blob around various staged levels collecting other blobs and dropping them off in their needed place. What makes this different from arcade mode is in the fact that you have a limited number of moves to complete each level. Once you make a move, your blob will go until it hits a wall, so you are going to have to play this mode as a puzzle game thus making it an almost new game in and of itself.
Nostalgia mode takes away the neon sheen and replaces it with a classic art-style in the vain of the old Steamboat Willy cartoon. This mode more resembles arcade mode, but changes the level size and techniques required to complete. Levels mix things up by throwing three to five classic cats in on the same screen in separate boxed in areas of various size. You’ll control all the cats as a single entity, so collecting eggs becomes an insane affair when you are watching three or more screens at once. You won’t have to drop eggs off so you wont have that to contend with, but strategy becomes much more of a necessity with this mode.
Lastly there is Arena mode that serves as the games multiplayer mode. You can go head-to-head against your friends, something that goes well with Pix The Cats arcade sensibilities. It’s a blast to turn Pix into a party game and because of its ease of accessibility makes it fun for everyone to get into quickly. In fact, I like the game so much that I pulled the X-Arcade stick I have in my Mame machine to play Pix The Cat in a true arcade fashion.
If you are looking for a great high-score style game then Pix The Cat is not going to disappoint. Now I just hope that Pastagames finds the time to turn this one into an actual arcade machine because I’d love to see this as a full size cabinet just as Namco did with Pac-Man Championship Edition.
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