Pixelcade: Arcade & Retro game

Walk into an arcade that fits in your pocket.

Pixel Cade is a whole arcade, not a list of mini-games. Make a character, walk the floor, pick a machine and play. The tickets you win are spent at the prize counter on things that visibly change the room you are standing in - a new floor, a new wall, furniture, a new look for yourself.

TWENTY-ONE MACHINES, AND EVERY ONE OF THEM IS SKILL

Action: Cross Town, Glass House, Galactic Invaders, Neon Moth, Neon Runner, Night Drive.
Precision: Claw Grabber, Duck Season, Lock Breaker, Maze Racer, Target Shot, Tower Stacker.
Midway: Monster Drop, Open The Box, Cyclone, Hoop Fever, Key Master, Coin Pusher, Critter Bash.
Puzzle: Stack Attack, Neon Block Breaker.

Each machine has its own rules, its own trophy board and its own personal best. Bronze, silver and gold have to be earned more than once, so a single lucky run cannot hand you a trophy you cannot repeat.

NO FORCED ADS

Video ads are opt-in only. You tap a button to double a score or to carry on after a run - never because the game decided you had played long enough. There is one app-open ad, frequency capped, and that is the lot.

NOTHING TO BUY

No in-app purchases. No currency for sale. No loot boxes, no wagering, no randomised rewards. Tickets are earned by playing and spent on cosmetics, and nothing in the shop makes you better at anything. Every score on every board was set by somebody's thumbs.

NO ACCOUNT, NO SERVER

There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to log into. Your progress lives on your own phone. Apart from the ads, the game works with the aeroplane mode switch on.

BUILT OUT OF NOTHING

Pixel Cade ships with no image files, no audio files and no fonts. Every sprite, every sound effect and the entire typeface are generated in code the moment the game starts. That is why it is small, why it looks the same on every screen it lands on, and why it runs on a phone that struggles with everything else.

MADE TO BE BEATABLE

Every machine is tuned by measurement rather than by feel. Each one is played by four levels of test player and by a hand mashing the screen at random, and the bronze trophy is set above what that random hand can reach. If a machine gets harder, it is because it is asking more of you - not because a timer ran out.

Made by one person. Bug reports and complaints about a machine that feels unfair are genuinely welcome: https://github.com/BlackenedEDIT/Pixelcade/issues