Insufficient Funds: Pixel Purge

Insufficient Funds is a weekly post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without overdrafting your bank account. So if you're low on funds, stay tuned to Cerebral Pop every Friday morning.

This isn’t some kind of rule, and I hesitate to even say it, but the simple and free games found all over the internet have probably taken up much more of my time than any single game I’ve purchased in the last few months. I should learn my lesson and never buy another game again, but that’s not going to happen. I’m just too stupid.

Look, I don’t recommend many games because of how subjective someone’s enjoyment of a video game is, but I’m going to recommend this game: Pixel Purge.

It’s a free game on Kongregate and can be found here. I won’t blame you if you click on that link and never return to read the rest of what I have to say about it. No hard feelings. But if you don’t at least give the game a shot, you’ll be missing out on one of the most addictive shooters I’ve ever played.

Another thing I try not to do: compare two games. But I think it’s necessary in this case, so I’m going to do it. If I had to pick a game to compare Pixel Purge with, it would be Geometry Wars. While Geometry Wars is a challenging game (to me), Pixel Purge is much more forgiving. Instead of a one-hit death, you’re given a life bar; and when you collect enough pixels (what the enemy drops when killed), or shoot enough enemies, you level up and get to choose how you want to level up your ship.

It becomes almost like a role-playing game. The more leveling up you do, the better your ship becomes; but the enemies become increasing difficult as well. It’s well balanced, I think. And leveling up is really neat, too. Not only does the game give you a satisfying “ding!” when you level up, but all the enemies are cleared from the screen. It’s the only thing resembling a smart bomb in the game, but the attributes that can be changed at a level up make sure you won’t be needing some sort of screen-clearing smart bomb anyway.

Listen, just try it out. It’s free. The only thing it will cost you is time. Maybe more than you’re anticipating, but when it comes to video games, is that a bad thing?

Let us know what you think!