PlayStation Mobile spotlight: Life of Pixel

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My name is Richard Hill-Whittall, I’m the Creative Director of Super Icon and I’d like to introduce you to a little green pixel who is coming to PlayStation Store for PlayStation Mobile tomorrow, 9th January, priced at £1.59/€1.99.
Life of Pixel is an old fashioned platform game with plenty of modern twists and puzzle elements. The star of the game is called Pixel and, as mentioned, he is a little green pixel. Tired of being part of the crowd, he wanted to see more and learn about his background. Luckily, he happened to live right next door to a videogame museum and under the cover of darkness he sneaked in to take a look…

Pixel found a World of Retro joy. A time when the humble pixel ruled!

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Life of Pixel is a game dedicated to the brilliance of classic gaming machines. The game is comprised of 64 levels, which are spread over eight different game machines.
We thoroughly researched the graphics capabilities, pixel resolutions, colour palettes and scrolling of each machine and our aim was to recreate these limitations as closely as possible. So, using the Commodore C64 levels as an example, the level blocks, enemy sprites, player sprite and effects were drawn using the exact palette limitations and pixel resolution of the C64 – so nice chunky 2×1 pixels were the order of the day.

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Each machine features eight levels, and the machines included within Life of Pixel are Atari 2600, ZX81, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, BBC Model B, Nintendo Gameboy and NES.
The game itself is full of classic platform elements old and new, such as moving and destructible platforms, double jumps, gravity inversion (walk on ceilings) and lots of different enemies. The aim is for the player to collect a certain amount of gems to open the EXIT door, with the focus on completing the level in the fastest possible time.

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Working on Life of Pixel was just about the best experience in my 20-plus years of game development. To get the chance to create graphics within the limitations of all those old machines was a dream come true – and if you look carefully you will see lots of nods to classic games that were popular on the various machines.
I hope you all enjoy playing the game as much as I enjoyed making it!

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