While many indie video games base their art direction on the 8-bit or 16-bit style graphics, Adventures of Pip blends the worlds together in both graphics and gameplay mechanics. In Adventures Of Pip, the world focuses on pixels primarily as a way to differentiate the class hierarchy – individuals made up of higher resolutions are considered better than those made up of lower resolutions. Our story follows the journey of Pip – a boy born as one single pixel. You’re tasked by the King and Queen of the land to save Princess Adeline, and stop the evil Queen DeRezzia from turning the land into a bunch of scattered pixels.
Adventures Of Pip‘s unique gameplay mechanic is his ability to turn from a 1-pixel box to a higher resolution form and back again. Each form of Pip holds special abilities: 1-pixel Pip is lighter than high-res Pip and can glide across gaps, but high-res Pip is the only one of the two who can punch and wall-jump. Knowing when to assume which form is key to finishing the platformer puzzles the game relentlessly bombards you with.
The gameplay levels seem to be a mix of Metroid stages with Megaman platforming, and boss battles that seem to have come out of Yoshi’s Island. This brings in an air a familiarity for most gamers, and those that aren’t used to such games should not find the Adventures of Pip overly difficult to understand. In fact, gamers might find this game a bit easier than similar platformers due to the game’s inability to punish the player for dying.
Shovel Knight, for example, will decrease your collection of money for every death, but Adventures Of Pip will not take anything away from the player – no currency loss, no “lives” to monitor, nothing. At worst, you will have to redo a certain section of the level until you find the checkpoint. While the game’s difficulty increases as you go forward, there is no real urgency to execute a flawless run or make a player second guess their actions.
The graphical side of the game appears to be a mixture of Fez with the pixilated stages and characters, and Braid with the higher resolution character models such as Queen DeRezzia or Princess Adeline. Even though the graphics don’t appear to be optimized for 1080p gaming, that’s hardly a reason not to play Adventures Of Pip. The graphics are visually pleasing to the eye, and they make the game fun to play as well as fun to watch. The musical score is great in Adventures Of Pip as well, combining orchestral compositions for most levels.
Like most indie-developed games created nowadays, the Adventures Of Pip was grown from its humble beginnings on Kickstarter. The developers, Tic Toc Games, found its home initially for the PC and Wii U, but has only recently found itself now on all current-gen consoles. With addicting and fun gameplay, Adventures Of Pip will have you easily entertained and keep you playing for hours at a time. For $14.99 USD, it’s a definite buy for the indie platformer fan!