When a game transforms your minutes into hours without you realising, you know you’re onto a winner. Pix The Cat is a high-score title that does exactly that, luring you in with its brightly coloured levels and funky music, before trapping you in its vibrant world. Playing as the feline Pix, the game’s major appeal comes from its Arcade mode, the place where high-score dreams are both made and broken, the premise being to first collect all the eggs, before dropping the hatched ducks into the target holes.
Choosing from the three Grids or the Daily, you’ll go deeper and deeper into the nested levels as you play, with combos and perfect scores gaining you more points and a quicker Pix. The faster he goes, the harder getting it right is and with enemies trying to block you and the ducklings piling up the space, Arcade quickly becomes a testing examination of your reflex skills. Continually challenging, Arcade taps into your desire to be the best, while also offering you rewards for continually beating your previous scores, such as new modes, ghosts and voices.
Of the other two single-player modes, Laboratory provides the most interesting challenge, the aim being to drop the cells into the holes withina set number of moves. Testing your forward-thinking skills, Laboratory is a welcome change from the fast pace of Arcade, while Nostalgia, with its egg-count goal, is fun to play fora while, but doesn’t quite manage to sustain the same long periods of captivity as the other two modes. A local multiplayer option also injects some competitive play to the game, but the objective it houses becomes boring.
Pix The Cat’s vivacious style and addictive substance makes it a high-score game to be played over and over again. A cross between Pac-Man and Snake, if you’re looking for a some old-school arcade fun wrapped in new ideas then Pix The Cat is the one for you. Just be sure not to play before bed time.
8/10
Choosing from the three Grids or the Daily, you’ll go deeper and deeper into the nested levels as you play, with combos and perfect scores gaining you more points and a quicker Pix. The faster he goes, the harder getting it right is and with enemies trying to block you and the ducklings piling up the space, Arcade quickly becomes a testing examination of your reflex skills. Continually challenging, Arcade taps into your desire to be the best, while also offering you rewards for continually beating your previous scores, such as new modes, ghosts and voices.
Of the other two single-player modes, Laboratory provides the most interesting challenge, the aim being to drop the cells into the holes withina set number of moves. Testing your forward-thinking skills, Laboratory is a welcome change from the fast pace of Arcade, while Nostalgia, with its egg-count goal, is fun to play fora while, but doesn’t quite manage to sustain the same long periods of captivity as the other two modes. A local multiplayer option also injects some competitive play to the game, but the objective it houses becomes boring.
Pix The Cat’s vivacious style and addictive substance makes it a high-score game to be played over and over again. A cross between Pac-Man and Snake, if you’re looking for a some old-school arcade fun wrapped in new ideas then Pix The Cat is the one for you. Just be sure not to play before bed time.
8/10