City builders are one of the most common apps on the app store. Whether you are building your ideal town or building the best theme park on the planet, the App Store has an abundance of options. If a city …
City builders are one of the most common apps on the app store. Whether you are building your ideal town or building the best theme park on the planet, the App Store has an abundance of options.
If a city builder wants to stand out from the crowd, it offers something the others don’t and a reason to come back. Luckily for us, Pixel People does more than enough to keep me coming back for more.
Pixel People was a brilliant game that came out in 2013. It was created by Lamb Damu and published by Chillingo who had control over the IP. This meant Pixel People was pulled from the store, never to be seen again.
That was until Lamb Damu got the IP back and made Pixel People from scratch. So, any old save data you have is worthless as this is technically a brand-new game. If you haven’t heard of Pixel People, then don’t worry, there is nothing else you need to know besides it has returned.
Pixel People is all about building your very own utopia in space. However, building a utopia from scratch is no walk in the park, how do you get new people and new jobs? The answer is simple, clone them!
Jobs are unlocked in Pixel People by splicing two sets of genetic materials together. An example of one of these many combinations involves splicing a Mayor and a Deputy, which will give you a Secretary.
Experiment with gene pools to find all 150 different occupations. Doing so will unlock certain buildings and even a minigame or two. This means expanding your city is less about a paywall, but how creative you are with mixing your genes around.
With any city builder, there is sitting around waiting for timers to finish up. If you have a personal vendetta against waiting a couple of minutes for it to create a clone or a building to be built, then maybe this isn’t for you.
But, if you are a patient player who wants to create an awesome city in space then Pixel People is perfect! I don’t know if the graphics alone is what kept me entertained, or the constant pursuit of new occupations, either way, it was hard to put down.
I have dabbled with several city builders and theme park creators and they all have this addiction built in. What impedes most of these games is the constant use of packs and random chance. You might get this building or ride if you pay $5 for some packs.
Pixel People stays away from this toxic practice and instead offers you the option to buy Utopium if you wish. Otherwise, you can wait, or watch an advert to trim some minutes off the wait timer.
Normally games like this have a drawback, like the paywalls mentioned earlier. However, it appears Pixel People is more about good old honest fun. Maybe the fact it was originally designed back in 2013 means the predatory practices of recent games are kept at arm’s length.
Maybe the designers wanted our experience to be as pleasant as possible, maybe they aren’t financially motivated. All I know is Pixel People delivers where many others fail and I will keep this city builder for just a little while longer.
