Should You Play Ethereum Farming Game ‘Pixels’ If You Don’t Care About Crypto?

I'm not a crypto person. I don't have a wallet and I don't invest in Bitcoin, Ethereum or any stupid meme coins. And while I love video games and have written about them for years, the world of crypto gaming is uncharted territory for me.

Likewise, Pixels, an Ethereum-based online farming game, is new to me, although it immediately reminds me of another very popular game: Pixels is basically the charming indie gem Stardew Valley, but with a crypto twist.

I can't stress how similar this game is visually and mechanically to Stardew Valley. I've been playing both games in recent weeks to see how much the crypto element changes the game, whether it improves or detracts from the fun, and how “web2 gamers” like myself can still enjoy pixels without knowing or holding crypto.

Is Pixel worth playing if you don't care about crypto? And it ultimately made me want to engage with this place on a deeper level? This is my take.

First steps

Getting started with Pixel is easy. Kind of. All you have to do is head over to the Pixel website, punch in your email address or phone number and you're signed in. Although the login screen mentions that Ronin's Wallet is coming soon, you currently don't need a wallet to play. It is required. This can be a hindrance to the future for anyone who doesn't want to touch the technology.

There are some fast onboarding on Ethereum for the main currencies of the game – Popberries, Gems and Coins and the on-chain PIXEL token that players can earn. Gems are a currency that can be bought externally and used to buy cosmetic items. You grow popberries, and earn coins by completing orders.

So how do you fulfill orders? A helpful non-playable character (NPC) named Barney guides you through using basic tools. When I say Pixel feels like Stardew Valley, you'll see what I mean here. Your first set of tools consists of a rusty watering can and a basic axe, pickaxe and scissors – the same starting tool set as Stardew and even the naming of the rusty watering can. There is no loophole as you have to use coins to buy new soil squares.

Your small plot of land comes with a house, six squares of soil, four trees and a mine. The mine isn't something you enter – you send a cart in there and a random number generator decides whether or not you can find one of several minerals, stones, etc.

Cold place

In some ways, Pixels offers some pretty cool features compared to Stardew. Where Stardew requires you to walk between different locations, you can move between your farm and town with a couple of quick clicks of pixels. The game doesn't seem to care if you plan to interact with your trees, mine, or them. That being said, they're a lot bigger than Stardew—but you can click on things faster if you want.

But the similarities to Stardew are mostly superficial. Yes, you're farming, logging, and mining, and you level up to perform those skills faster or build more complex things. You also have a power bar to determine how many things you can do in a given sitting.

But you're not building relationships with other characters – one of the most rewarding aspects of Stardew Valley. Also there is no time lapse. Stardew Valley has a day and night cycle as well as seasons that drastically change the gameplay. After a long and fascinating adventure in the game's cave system, you emerge into the darkest darkness. The relationships and the passage of time help make Stardew Valley feel like a real, warm place.

Pixels, by comparison, are like a liminal space– but not in a cold, creepy way. The few NPCs available are fully functional, standing in for menus for functions such as shopping or trading gems. They have no personality. Since they buy things from their benches instead of directly through NPCs, they also feel like there's no reason to be there.

And it's always a day with no time to spare. You never sleep, and the lack of seasons makes the game endless. How long have I lived here? A week? year? Where Stardew Valley is a place I want to hang out in, Pixel feels like a strange and creepy dream.

Crypto rules everything around me

When you get down to it, pixels are mostly a series of timers. Soon you will have a stone work stove, wood work bench and iron work bench in your home. But mostly what you're doing is clicking on them to produce one thing at a time, a pretty long timer. The inventory is small to begin with, and it grows slowly.

And this is an online only game. It's only available via browser, and when you go to town, you'll find other players walking around wearing weird clothes they've bought with their jewelry, or showing off their own NFT avatars.

Anything that looks like fun and progress is locked away behind pearls. Getting enough in the game to make gems in pixels at first is, as far as I can tell, impossible. Dozens of hours go by before you can even consider the thought.

Interacting with currency seems to be the main goal of Pixels, and gameplay is secondary to that purpose. If you want to interact with the game, you need to interact with the crypto/NFT components. Simply put, Stardew Valley offers a mechanically similar experience, but is richer in character and more rewarding in every way.

I'm not particularly interested in cryptocurrency because there's no reason for me to continue playing Pixel. Stardew Valley does everything the Pixel does, but adds warmth. It is at least as much about building a community as there is about growing fruit and vegetables, to make this mechanical simulation as empty as it is.

Pixels feels like what I expected a crypto game to feel like—empty and repetitive. And those are not crypto games He can't Be good! There is definitely room there for someone to crack the question of what gameplay loop works in a game to achieve real-world encryption. But generated pixels, no matter how attractive it sounds, are not.

Edited by Andrew Hayward.

Editor's Note: For a pick-me-up from someone already immersed in the crypto world, be sure to read our original review from February 2024.