Axel & Pixel has the right ingredients. It’s an indie game released on the Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace, a platform which helped Braid achieve commercial and critical success. Like the mind-bending Braid, it has an unusual take on a gaming staple, in its case the point-and-click genre. Like And Yet it Moves - another great indie game we’ve talked about - it features a quirky, endearing art style that draws you in immediately. So why hasn’t this unique, interesting downloadable title caught on with the masses?
The point-and-click adventure has enjoyed a revival in the capable hands of Telltale Games. Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People received critical acclaim and were rated by both old and news fans alike. These games are loved for their humor, but their broad appeal stems from their simplified yet enjoyable puzzles.
Gone are the illogical, convoluted and cruel puzzles of yore that made you work for your treasure in the old Monkey Island games. Telltale’s puzzles are much simpler, with solutions that aren’t quite obvious, but certainly not difficult to find. There’s also concession through well-designed hint mechanics. Telltale’s range of point-and-click adventures is the best example of gaming changing to accommodate its ever-broadening audience.
But when is simplification oversimplification? Maybe Axel & Pixel answers that question. Rather than asking you to solve its puzzles by working out which object to use on what (the point-and-click staple), it distils the genre to its core: to solve its puzzles, you simply point and click on things.
Clickable objects glow yellow and rumble your controller. Clicking on them triggers an animation, like Axel climbing up a ladder or Pixel running through a pipe. The gameplay stems from clicking things in the right order. For example, to progress over a bridge you have to clear all obstacles. Clearing these obstacles is either done by clicking on them or clicking on something or a set of things that eventually lead to their removal. It’s that simple.
Does it work? That depends on how attached you are to the world and its characters. I’ve talked about my disdain for Prince of Persia’s unchallenging gameplay on my own blog, but for many players its colorful world and impressionable characters were more than enough to keep them interested beyond its quick time event-like platforming. Many games have forgone challenge for a cohesive, hassle-free experience, so clearly oversimplification can work.
It’s not surprising, then, that there’s a wide range of critical standpoints out there on Axel & Pixel. So why doesn’t it have the broad appeal of a Prince of Persia?
Maybe its characters could have done with more grace; the human and dog partnership of Axel and Pixel never quite charms like the dog and rabbit partnership of Sam and Max, with the developer’s choice to limit dialogue to incoherent mumbles and barks arguably inadvisable. Nor is there much in the disconnected story; Axel and Pixel are wandering through Axel’s dream world, and this too is simplified to solely allowing for the weird and wonderful.
But it’s the weird and the wonderful that the game does best. The worlds and puzzles that you encounter and play through are enchanting. Giant ice caves, bizarre monsters, a variety of unusual critters and so much vibrancy and color help keep you engaged despite the lack of challenge. Most of this is achieved through the hand drawn animations that are superimposed over the cutout backgrounds. Charm can cover up a lot of the cracks.
Sadly, it’s all a bit superficial and unessential, a bit like a fast food meal; a quick burst of tasty fluff that fills you up, but not truly satisfying. And this is the problem XBLA games like Axel & Pixel are going to keep facing: there’s so much choice on that platform that if something isn’t truly satisfying it might get lost amongst the masses, and that would be a shame.
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