By Jeremy Azevedo

Of all the adjectives I would normally use to describe a video game, this may be the first time I’ve ever used the word, “relaxing”. And yet that’s the word that kept coming to mind as I was playing the new downloadable game, “Axel & Pixel” on Xbox Live.

Axel & Pixel is sort of more like an interactive art project than it is a game. It operates in the same fashion as a point and click PC adventure game, but is so highly evolved in terms of it’s visual presentation that you really spend more time admiring the look of the game than you do actually playing it.

Axel & Pixel is the story of an artist (Axel) that becomes trapped in a dream world with his loyal dog, Pixel, and a magic paintbrush with which to solve the game’s many puzzles that lay before him. You simply point your magic brush at any interactive object, press the action button, and Axel will do with it whatever must be done. Each of the worlds is divided into several stages that represent the four seasons. Graphically, the levels are designed with a combination of photography and simple 2-D animation that combines to create an incredibly weird effect. It’s very surreal, as are the solutions to many of the puzzles that impede your progress.

Nothing can really “kill” you in Axel & Pixel, so you’re never really in that much of a hurry to complete the stages. You’re free to take your time, experimenting with different objects to remove barriers and get ahead. As a result of this leisurely pace, Axel & Pixel is a nice break from the faster paced “Call of Duties” and “Grand Theft Autos” of the world. It’s not really the kind of thing you’d play for four hours straight, but it’s a fun diversion to keep going back to it from time to time.

However, he actual replayability in Axel & Pixel is probably limited by the fact that the game is a little on the short side, and that there aren’t really multiple solutions to puzzles at all. Once you’ve mastered it, all there is to do is to try and do it again, but faster. By this time though, it just becomes an exercise in memorization (save for the driving/flying/etc. end stages, which are always sort of fun in a weird way). The game still looks great, but on subsequent playthroughs you’re really just going through the motions and maybe trying to collect the occasional item that you passed up the last time through.

To compare Axel & Pixel to a “gamer’s game” like “Shadow Complex” or “Castle Crashers” isn’t really fair, because it clearly is aimed at the hardcore audience. But this is not to say that the game doesn’t have it’s own unique merits. And for only 800 MS points, I strongly recommend that anyone with a passing interest in art design or playing games whilst stoned, as well as dudes that would like to entice their girlfriends to play, at least give Axel & Pixel a try.

I award Axel & Pixel 7.5 out of 10 Unicorns Fighting a Robot Dolphin:

+1 if you're currently enrolled in art school
+2 If you are in possession of a medical marijuana prescription for a “bad back”
-2 If you’re deathly afraid of dogs, cartoon or otherwise

Axel & Pixel Debut Trailer