Sometimes it feels like we give indie games a free pass. Sure, it’s impressive when a small time with a limited budget manages to release a functional game–it’s more than we’ve ever done–but is that enough in this modern era of Humble Bundles and voluminous digital distribution libraries? They Bleed Pixels is only the latest in a string of quirky, difficult platformers, but it feels like it may have shown up a little too late. Indie PC titles are dime-a-dozen these days, and the standards for fun and quality have gone up all around.

Taking equal parts inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft and Super Meat Boy, They Bleed Pixels attempts to blend cute, gross, and silly into a cohesive and difficult package. In some areas, it succeeds. Like many niche experiences made by small teams, the game is damn hard. It has barely more than a dozen stages, but each will take you quite a while to complete, if you manage to get through them at all. There are some bonus levels as well, which are just as (if not more) difficult than the main campaign. If you’re looking for a challenging little adventure, you might have found it here.

The other achievement I can hand the game with no doubts is that it has a decent score. In addition to having the best name ever, DJ Finish Him has constructed quite a series of beeps and boops for your listening pleasure, although the interminable gameplay means you will probably end up sick of the soundtrack anyway. Once you are done reading this review I highly recommend heading over here and checking out the OST in its entirety.

With that said, almost everything else about TBP is unremarkable. The plot follows a young “goth” girl at a comically suspicious all-female school who comes across a bleeding book. Of course, she touches it, causing her to have 8-bit dreams in which she must jump from platform to platform in 2D. I may be attempting to undercut the premise with humor, but the fact is that any and all actual narrative here is an afterthought. The game is “inspired” by the writing of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, so it eschews any actual storytelling in favor of a few static images and context-less quotations.

Honestly, the Lovecraft thing is played out at this point. Zeboyd raised the bar with Cthulhu Saves The World, combining an obvious familiarity with the source material and genuine humor. Pixels will occasional use names like “Dagon,” but you don’t actually get the sense that the writer is a fan of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” Of course, there’s no way to know one way or the other (and that’s hardly the point anyway), but the fact is that the game doesn’t use the mythos as a starting point or setting–it uses it as a crutch.

Let’s just assume all of that is just background fluff. If the game is meant to live or die by its gameplay, it actually does fare slightly better. The platforming is almost identical to Meat Boy, from the environmental hazards to the wall-sliding mechanic, but Spooky Squid did attempt to deepen the experience with some combat. Interestingly, all fighting is done with one button. To execute different maneuvers you need to tap, hold, or tab the button whilst running. The intention of this system is apparently to simplify, but instead it makes the whole game less precise. I won’t bore you with all the little ways this setup inconvenienced me, but I will say that I would have preferred a more complicated fighting system if it meant having smoother combos and less input lag.

The second, and final, innovation TBP brings to the table is its checkpoint system. Instead of saving at will or at pre-determined points, the player places checkpoints manually. This can be done by building up a meter, which is filled with either floating collectibles or the blood of your enemies. In theory, this is a cool idea. The better you play, the more often you can save. In practice, you gain enough meter to save after every reasonable stretch of danger, at which point a sane level designer would have placed a checkpoint anyway. It also doesn’t help that loading a previously saved file crashed the game on more than one occasion.

Speaking of technical issues, They Bleed Pixels is surprisingly unforgiving in that department. Aside from the aforementioned crashes, I also encountered a sound glitch which muted the music until a rebooted the executable. I was playing a pre-release beta build though, so that may have been fixed since launch. Another subjective concern is the resources needed for your machine to play it in the first place. I was pretty surprised by the recommended 2.6Hz Intel Quad Core processor, which meant that over half of the BT staff was unable to review the game in the first place. I’m sure that you, the stoic PC gamer, can run the game, but it certainly feels as though it has unnecessarily high requirements in light of its visual fidelity.

They Bleed Pixels isn’t a terrible game. It’s not even a bad game. It’s just not very fun or compelling, especially in a crowded sea of “quirky” indie titles. If you need an eldritch fix, pick up Cthulhu Saves the World. If you want a tough-as-nails platformer, grab Super Meat Boy. If you need a stylish 2D brawler, download Shank. If you require pixelated blood ‘n’ gore, then Lone Survivor is the game for you. Need more? I can do this all day.

A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes and played for about 7 hours. The title is a PC exclusive.

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