Howdy! After the reveal at Gamescom and the ARENA mode presentation, I’m back with another Pix the Cat game mode that just might float your steamboat! The Nostalgia Mode!

Everything in the NOSTALGIA mode: gameplay, art, music… is inspired by something from the past that we love.
Gameplay comes from Snake, Art from the early animated cartoons and Music from the jangling melodies of Ragtime!

We took these references, shook them up in a vintage cocktail shaker and poured out a cloudy mixture, something we think looks like us. The result is a game that feels familiar but is always ready to surprise you!

This mode plays like Snake but with a few twists. Collect the target number of ducklings to win. Succeed before the Goat chomps the Flower to get the “bonus”. Don’t run into a wall, get stuck inside your tail or collide with a baddie, or it’s Game Over!

The many levels offer a variety of thrills and pleasures that blend into an adventure that’s one of a kind. Some levels last a couple of seconds and only require a few moves. Some are about being consistent in collecting a ton of ducklings in your tail without crashing. Others are tiny ant-farms in which you need to collect only a few eggs but getting there is the tough part! And of course many more which I’ll leave for you to unravel…

I’ll let Hervé Barbaresi, Lead Artist @pastagames, tell you a little more about the nostalgia theme:

“Pix the Cat’s Nostalgia Mode gave me the opportunity to have fun adapting the charming old-fashioned touches from the classic black and white cartoons of the 1920’s.

The challenge with this skin was to make you forget that you are controlling a video game character on a tiled grid. We have worked and re-worked the image filters (grain, B&W pulse, glitches, dirt and scratches…) to create a look which really evokes the simple yet sophisticated feel of those old cartoons.

It was a real treat designing the various gameplay elements throughout the levels in this mode! I went with simple, expressive shapes, then made them look as plump as possible. Keep that in mind when you meet Mr. Owl for the first time!

I think you’ve caught a glimpse of how fond I am of Nostalgia… I really hope that the way the game plays, my personal contribution as well as the delightful tunes of @XavierThiry will transport you to the worlds of old!”

The post Introducing NOSTALGIA MODE! appeared first on Pastagames.

In-depth couch gaming!

Hi folks!
We are releasing Pix the Cat on PS4™ and PSVita™ (cross-buy) in the first weeks of October and we have a new game mode exclusive for PS4™ players: the ARENA !!!

Call me old-school but the most outrageous fun I have when playing games is with friends, at home, facing the same screen, hearing laughter or frustration after a quirky situation. I grew up with Bomberman and am still playing Towerfall just to enjoy shoving my buddy’s controller away when he’s winning or whining too much!

We have been wanting to make a nervous and rewarding couch-game for years at Pastagames and Pix the Cat turned out to be the best opportunity to satisfy this multiplayer urge!

In the ARCADE Mode, you control a restless cat in a dimensional maze. You collect ducklings that line up in a tail behind you – and then deliver them on targets to open the gates of the next level.

The core Pix gameplay sets solid grounds for a feisty ARENA brawl! So we added three other cats to make a party of (up to) four players that fight to be the last PixBot standing.

You will collect ammo-eggs that make your tail longer (and slow you down) and then use them to destroy your opponents. Three egg-types grant you different weapons: the white stun-shots, the green proxy-mines and the purple amok-rockets.

You can also choose to consume your ammo-eggs for a continuous “Dash” to ram through your opponents. Dashing is colorblind and will burn through purple, green and white ammo-eggs alike.

Find your own style to go with each of the seven Arenas – they cater to all! From Trap-Tsar to Lean Mean Missile Launching Machine, through the Insta-Head-First-Rusher without forgetting the Unstoppable Dash Train, every strategy has its place… and its score screen medal!

Don’t underestimate the power of white eggs and minimalistic strategy. Collecting a lot of ammo is not always wise. A carefully timed stun shot followed up with a tiny-one-egg-dash can be extremely effective!

Some of the Arenas feature nested sub-levels you can hide in to avoid oncomers. Or use them to change battle-grounds if you think it is to your advantage. The warps can be your saving grace! But watch out, as soon as all PixBots are in the same dimension, the camera will zoom down, closing warps on its way!

If you’re having a three or four player ARENA party, killed PixBots will come back to life as ghosts! This way, you never stop playing… because if a ghost hits a live PixBot, they’ll switch, one coming back to life as the other fades away into a grudgeful ghost!

Ghosts may not be speedy but they pack a punch! If you or your ammo-tail gets caught you’ll regret it! Don’t try shooting them either, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise!

There’s too much to say on the many strategies and tricks to adopt in order to win with the various setups and settings you go about in the ARENA… So you’ll have to find your own! Please do share them if you’ve invented new ones!

It’s the first time at Pastagames that we stay afterhours and fight for a controller to play a game we’ve being working on for ages! We hope you’ll take as much pleasure blasting your friends away as we did in making this mode!

tl;dr

Pix the Cat – ARENA is a local multiplayer combat game mode. It’s friendly and beastly, hectic and strategic. It’s very simple to tame and have fun with, even when playing with experienced players but if you stick with it you’ll find many levels of hidden depths - pun intended - waiting to be explored.
So dash on fellow PixBots!

Find us @pastagames and @nadimpasta

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