The Pixel Ark’s slingshot mechanics and generous gacha drops are still loads of fun

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SHOULD I PLAY THE PIXEL ARK?

Give this one a go if you’re into gacha games, slingshot mechanics, PVP, or postapocalyptic settings. I’m usually very suspicious about gacha titles and the all too frequent pay-to-win strategies that keep the game from being fun without. Luckily, The Pixel Ark was consistently entertaining and has generous drops. Best of all, I didn’t have to pay anything!

TIME PLAYED

I’m around five hours into The Pixel Ark and have unlocked several different game modes, like Nuclear Garden, a monster-collecting mode, as well as an arena-style deathmatch mode called Captain’s Battle. I’ve also been able to upgrade my characters and boost my roster with some cool heroes.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT THE PIXEL ARK?

• The slingshot battle system. Aiming and launching my hero into a group of enemies was a lot of fun. Honestly, it took more strategy than I initially thought it would. I had to consider enemy formations, special skills, and the best areas to launch my character to get the widest array of damage. There was an auto-combat feature, but it’s these awesome slingshot mechanics that make The Pixel Ark such a blast to play. I don’t know why anyone would want to sit on the sidelines and let the computer do all of the work.

• The blended animation. The Pixel Ark blends pixelated art and hand-drawn animation to create an interesting and unique postapocalyptic world. I liked the strange character designs, which included a cool chick with a giant robot arm and a mercenary with a mohawk and a gnarly gas mask. Artistry like this really brought out the world and made me more interested in collecting the various characters.

• Competitive PVP action. Switching up the gameplay and testing my skills against some living, breathing humans is always nice. It didn’t take too long to find matches either, and though I'm still a long way from actually being skilled enough to whip some ass in Captain’s Battle, I liked having an extra incentive for upgrading and building up my heroes.

• The gacha drops. So far, I’ve been able to get some great heroes, and I haven’t paid a thing. There was never a time I had to wait for energy or something like that to reroll. I’m not sure if The Pixel Ark will stay this way, but right now, the lack of an aggressive monetization system is really encouraging.

• Pokémon-style monster collector. I have no idea how this fits into the narrative at all, but in The Pixel Ark, I raised these little Pokémon-esque monsters that added bonuses to my characters. Does it make sense? Nope! Is it awesome? Hell yeah.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT THE PIXEL ARK?

• The weird plot. Traveling around the postapocalyptic world in a mobile ark and getting into fights is a cool premise, but aside from this, the narrative isn’t anything worth investing in. It was a bit hard to follow, and I wasn’t really interested in any of the characters’ personal stories.

• The sound. The Pixel Ark has decent voice acting and tunes, but they randomly cut out on my device. I don’t know if that’s a bug with the game or my device, but switching from voice-acted scenes to scenes that were text-only was jarring.

• Loss of data. The Pixel Ark previously launched just a month ago under the name The Wandering Ark; this is essentially the exact same game with a different title. Unfortunately, all of the characters and time I invested into The Wandering Ark was completely lost, as there was no way to transfer my progress to The Pixel Ark. This means I had to start from the beginning and rebuild my characters, which was incredibly frustrating. I’m not sure why the game was relaunched or went through the name change, but I wish the developers had given more consideration to players who already sunk time into the older version.

PLATFORM TESTED

Android via Samsung Galaxy A03s phone.