Omegapixel Review

Omegapixel welcomes players to the 2080s – the second 80’s – where everything is new yet old. Yes, Omegapixel uses a retro-inspired style, but it’s a surprisingly modern iOS game. It’s an arena survival game like Tilt to Live, where the player controls a ship they pilot, but there’s also the eponymous Omegapixel to consider. See, there are red enemies that will hurt the Omegapixel, which the ship can take out, and blue enemies that will hurt the ship. The ship and Omegapixel can switch places at any time to help get each other out of danger. As well, upgrades to help damage enemies and survive longer become available by picking up credits.

Omegapixel is free-to-play, though it probably does too good a job at being actually free, as while credits can be bought, good players can earn them quickly. Buying credits is buried relatively deep in menus, in marked contrast to some of the VC-backed titles that remind the player that additional in-game currency can be easily had for a few dead presidents. The game boasts both a story mode that has fixed levels, and an Arcade mode that appears randomized with fixed elements popping up at certain points. Coins earned in either mode can be applied toward ship upgrades in both modes. It’s a great balance between progression modes and pick-up-and-play gameplay.

The controls of Omegapixel are the biggest issue: the virtual joystick is just way too sensitive, as it becomes way too easy to fly haphazardly off in one direction, especially on the initial touch. A free-floating joystick that started in a neutral position on the initial touch with a wider area of effect would be extremely helpful. Also, the fake static effect throughout the game got annoying after a while – I just want to enjoy the pixel art for what it is. There’s iCloud syncing, and data gets stored to iCloud, but I never got it working between my iPad 2 and iPod touch with any kind of reliability. I still blame Apple more for these problems than the developers; it shouldn’t be this problematic.

Omegapixel’s control issues aside, the free pricetag is an absolute steal for a solid arena survival game with original elements, a humorous storyline, and levels where the goal is to dodge asteroids so they can crash into a planet to eventually destroy it. That's worth a download at least!