(TLDR at the bottom)

For a supposedly feature-complete game, I ran into so many small nuisances within the four hours I had playing for the first time that I simply cannot offer a recommendation. It's a huge shame because underneath it all is a really good game that desperately needs a round of player feedback to reach full potential. To Pixelia isn't across the finish line yet and people should know what they're getting into.

Overall, and from what I can tell, the game has some serious longevity if you don't mind grinding some slightly tedious gameplay loops to make progress. The game is clearly designed around slowly improving your skills and climbing your way to either fame or fortune (or both depending on your career), building friendships, relationships, family, and even rivalries along the way. I don't mind the grind personally as it adds a sense of reality to a genre that's otherwise saturated with idealised visions of the world. In To Pixelia you will be paying income tax, making rent every week, taking on debt, considering what services you do and do not need to meet your basic human needs, and generally be clutching your in-game wallet tighter than a first-year college student. It's great.

However, and as I said earlier, your overall experience can easily be ruined by any culmination of the minor oversights and bugs that could easily be ironed out if this was given even a small 1-year window of early access development. Aside from the very minor yet frequent grammatical issues, the most egregious of headaches is the painfully slow dialogue system that makes avoiding NPC interaction more preferable. For what it serves, this UI should be snappy and responsive, deliver quick, flavourful animations that add a sense of development with the character. The UI animation of the text tree unfolding is painfully slow and will not register the conversation as 'complete' until it's finished so you can click the next option for the chance of a measly +1–3 relationship points. It takes way too much time to do this a total of 8 or 9 times per person, and since the game clock is paused during this time, you're really only wasting the players' time.

This issue with UI persists in places like the casino where you have to re-enter your bet between every round and UI elements have to complete their slow fade-in animation before they can be interacted with. Overall it just needlessly slows the entire experience down and was my largest source of frustration. As a quick aside, the entire menu UI is a bit cluttered in places and makes use of very light pastel colors that can make distinguishing menus from sub-menus challenging at times and will certainly flashbang you if you're playing in a dark room and unprepared for it like I was. I also have no idea what that investment screen at the bank is attempting to convey, but it fails — What's wrong with a graph? All. Small. Oversights.

I haven't had much time to explore the career paths but two issue I noticed with the starting job as a waiter is that you don't have to take their orders or even show up on time at all. You can simply stand at the chef UI and wait for the order to be delivered to you telepathically and click on whatever dish gets a (1) underneath it. Really trivialised the whole thing, and I suspect similar logic gaps like this will appear in the other plentiful careers. Furthermore, jobs as a whole seem to be instanced minigames that offer no incentive to arriving on time. You get the same payout no matter when in your allotted time window you arrive, so you can literally arrive in the last 10 minutes of a shift and get a full day's pay depending on your performance in the minigame. How very EU-friendly of them.

There's nothing bad about a game releasing in early access when it's developed by a small or solo development team, and for what To Pixelia offers I would say has it more than 90% of other Early Access releases. I love playing and supporting small indie games like this and I will continue to play and probably flesh out this review more in time. To Pixelia offers a fun, casual and addictive experience that I really, really want to enjoy but actually playing it makes me more sour than it should for a genre of game that's meant to be intuitive and enjoyed casually.


- Gameplay loop is solid and enjoyable, if slightly repetitive.
- Plenty of gripes with UI and game logic that can make the experience sometimes more frustrating or disrupt immersion.
- Needs a few more months of development to iron out the minor issues I encountered.
- If you don't mind that or just really want a good life-sim game to sink 100+ hours into, I say go for it. Otherwise wait a few months or probably until the end of the year to get a seamless experience.

Although i adore this game. I've reached a point where I cannot progress in the game due to the amount of bugs

The college is bugged so I cant get a diploma and a better paying career. Milestones are bugged so I can't progress those. Job levels are bugged so I can never reach 10. My full time job is playing the slots at the casino. I was able to buy a business and do that and other activities. The game is still playable and fun but not being able to progress the milestones and quests is annoying.

UPDATE: Owning a business is bugged too :)

UPDATE 2: The developer is actively listening and fixing bugs/making improvements. An update was just released that fixed a few bugs and added some QoL features.

After 16 hours, I'm kinda done...

I played around a month in game (stopped winter 2) and I'm not sure I'm not sure if I'm gonna get back to it or not which is sad because it has a looot of potential

Here's why

Minigames : they are clunky and hard and after some times really repetitive.
Wife, child, pet : totally useless. the pets do nothing but that's something in a lot of game I can live with it. But nothing change with the wife once you are married except that they roam around the house. No new interaction, feels like you are not married (they even talk to you about their crush). The kid the first 5 days is useless, no interaction possible. After 5 days you can make a toddler and the only interaction with it is to change their apparence which cost prestige.
Prestige system : I dont really like having to buy everything twice. Once with prestige and once with money. The tasks to get them are really really repetitive, most of them are broken and dont register once your done. And if you want to change a trait its 1000 prestige but it doesnt work. Ambitious needs you to have a job so if you were like me and stop the job because you don't need it once you are a super model, you cant do some of them
Supermodel : Mini games untimed but I managed to do it. Got to the last part of the dream where you need 1000 fames... to realise that you can't get fame with this job. So I would have to do something I don't want (like music or writing because I hate their mini games) and is 0 related to my dream to finish it.
The cooking is useless (easier and less expensive to buy cooked food)
Decoration : I managed to do something that I like, but you cant rotate anything except chairs and couches which makes it really difficult with the layout of the appartements
The supermodel line feels like the only one without a faction which is sad

There's a lot going on, but nothing feels finished. Still had fun enough to play 16 hours, but not enough to want to play more for now. I put a no to the recommendation because I can't recommend it in this state. If it get fixed, its gonna be a total yes