Pixel Marathon review: race alongside your pop culture heroes

Pixel Marathon is an endless runner from Indonesia’s Tinker Games, and boy, does it look good! But can its gameplay keep pace with how great the game appears to be? Read on to find out!

The premise of Pixel Marathon is simple. You’re on a racetrack surrounded by pop-culture-inspired characters and you need to outrace them, either by going faster, lasting longer, or simply gunning them down. As ordinary Tom, you’re placed at the back of each race, and you must pick up guns or knives to aid you in your marathon. Your progress in each run is measured by your distance covered and the number of coins collected.

(See: Puzzle Run review: so, so, so freaking cute and fun!)

Coins in Pixel Marathon can be used in the game’s shop, which allows you to buy all but one tab of items with its virtual currency. The player can indulge in either new runners (also inspired by pop-culture) or in item upgrades. Unfortunately you cannot buy the items; you can only pick up your knives and guns on the track.

The items in the shop’s last tab require you to make purchases using real money, with the cheapest purchase setting you back $0.99. These purchases range from more coins to magnets which help you automatically pick up coins on the race track.

Audio and visuals

I enjoy Pixel Marathon both aurally and visually. It has some great MIDI sounds going on and the pixel art characters are both cute and representative of the pop culture figures Tinker Games is spoofing. There is a great attention to detail in the game as well, as evidenced by the crowd and the signboards in the background, and it’s pretty hilarious to see the runners racing against each other with their hands flailing behind.

Gameplay

However, Pixel Marathon stumbles a bit when it comes to the meat of the app: the actual gameplay. Character movement in Pixel Marathon makes use of either the phone’s gyroscope or on-screen swiping, and players are given a choice of controls before each game starts.

(See: Line’s Run Run hero review: why being linear isn’t all that bad)

In both cases, character movements are stilted and jerky, making for extremely difficult and off-putting play. It’s not that I can’t move my runner; he just moves slowly and awkwardly, and since I die when I hit anything except coins, I die a lot. Theoretically, this sort of character movement could work with a game with less obstacles, but Pixel Marathon has a lot of runners that get in your way, not to mention landmines.