Pretty, Little, Pixels | AXYZ, Stardust Skate, and Threshold
Alter your perspective, or the direction you are facing.
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Edits: Morgan Shaver (they/them), Nathan Miller (he/him), and Bex Stump (she/her)
STARDUST SKATE is the gay, twink, skateboarding game of Tony Hawk’s dreams—probably!—with its exciting mix of momentum and platforming—wrapped tightly together, like a lesbian flannel around your waist—and it’s somehow only three bucks?!!
This casual and addictive platformer is an eclectic amalgamation of everything delightful from the arcade and platforming hits of the 1990’s and early 2000’s—games like COOL BOARDERS and CRASH BANDICOOT—and it’s got a soundtrack packed with bops—that can all but carry you to the end of each level.
Each skater has different abilities and an irreverent, sarcastic, or playful personality, which gives you more options to find your skating style.
Stardust Skate has a lot of depth to it, including cosmetic unlocks, which are all purchased with stars you pick up while skating. More games should look into this system, instead of charging dollars, cause it’s fucking gas.
Get back up when you fall—unless you die—and magic, gay powers. It’s the coolest thing.
Stardust Skate is available on Steam for three bucks.
AXYZ is a retro-futuristic, fever dream that allows players to take it one square at a time—and you can always turn around to find a different path forward. The only obstacles in this world are where you are looking, and that can always be corrected.
AXYZ feels like a callback to early CD-ROM games, with its music, sound effects, and the vacant but hopeful sky in the background.
Even if you don’t know where you are going, there’s no harm in continuing forward, backwards, or the way you already came—there’s just something so beautiful and tranquil about there ultimately being no weight or consequences to your actions. It’s such a relaxing experience.
All you need to do is find your way forward, whichever that way ends up being.
I also enjoy jumping off of the edge and dying. It feels nice to do as a cute ball, that can rewind time.
AXYZ is available on Steam for twelve bucks.
From the very beginning, Threshold is a special piece of art that engages in a carefully constructed conversation—with anyone willing to listen—about the daily, normalized loss of life, across our entire history as a human species, inside all of our lives.
Writing on paper to communicate to save on limited oxygen works in tandem with two-letter names, and other normal parts of working at the company inside of Threshold, to explore the relationship between profitability maximization and the loss of individualism in our world, from “the State” and our corporate masters.
There’s a mystery inside the story of Threshold, but there’s also limited oxygen, and a great need to always make sure the train is moving. The train carries the important cargo, past the threshold wall.
We aren’t allowed to know what the train carries, despite it being our job. Although, I have heard that the corporate masters will tell us about “the cargo we protect” eventually, after we’ve worked here for a few dozen months.
Threshold is available on Steam for ten bucks. There is also a demo that is free and offers prologue story details, and additional world building.