Ultra Pixel Survive is a cute-looking 2D side-scroller, with colourful retro pixelated graphics – which seems to be all the rage at present. However, the game is anything but cute. This is a survival game, where you must harvest the natural resources around you – whether that’s slashing bushes with your sword, chopping down trees with your axe, or whacking rocks with your pickaxe.
Resources are needed for crafting new items, or upgrading what you already have. Your survival also depends on food – whether this is from gathering fruit or killing wandering livestock. There’s also a day and night cycle, and this is the key concept of the game.
By day everything is simple and straightforward, you hunt, forage, and explore the small environment. By night, however, hordes of nasties will descend onto your village and make sure you don’t survive until dawn. The key here is to utilise the daylight to craft traps and defences to keep these blighters at bay during the darkness that comes around far too soon.
You can also attack the baddies with your sword, although I found this to be extremely clunky, and the combat is very dissatisfying. You can also throw a boomerang, but this special move requires so much recharging between throws, it certainly cannot be relied upon.
What’s here is fun enough in short bursts, and as you progress a number of days, new characters and abilities can be unlocked – but you will still die, and die a lot. For the hunters among us, achievements and trophies are also given away for doing very little.
Ultra Pixel Survive is available now on Xbox, PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.
