A hero is somebody who voluntarily walks into the unknown.
The opening moments really set the tone. You pick your characters in a tavern with pixelated speech-bubbles appearing over each of the characters when you choose them. This small section had me in stitches and that's always a good start in my eyes. Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic proudly wears its heart on it's sleeve. An unabashed love letter to games gone by.
That humorous opening lulled me into a sense of false security. My first few dungeon raids were met with utter failure and if I'm honest I could have quite happily turned the game off. But I stuck with it for review purposes. There is no tutorial of any description so you're forced to work everything out on your own. Luckily the easy to use menus make the turn based strategy fairly intuitive. My teams kept getting wiped out one after another and when a member of your team dies the monsters get an additional turn. I quickly learned that this game was punishing and it was hell bent on spanking my arse every which way it could. This is a retro style game with a retro difficulty mentality.
As hard as Pixel Heroes is you'll soon settle into certain patterns where you will instantly know which character to use in specific situations. The more you explore the more options become available for you to use in combat and different sets of gear for your characters. A nice little nod to one of my favourite games of all time (Canon Fodder) is the use of headstones which continue to pile up in a graveyard which only added to my already growing shame as I watched the graveyard fill up quicker than I would like with my disposable heroes. Unless I missed something there doesn't seem to be an underlying story that ties everything together which for this genre felt a little strange. 
There are three difficulty levels to choose from and each dungeon you discover is made up of seven separate caves which end in a boss fight. The boss fights really pushed me to my limits due to the fact that by the time I got to the end my party was always severely depleted and with a very hard boss fight to win I failed countless times. The soundtrack suits the game perfectly to begin with. It's a nice throwback to my olden days of gaming with its 8-bit inspired tunes. I did find it started to grate on me a little bit after a while though although it wasn't enough for me to turn it off completely. The graphics complement the soundtrack perfectly. Everything on screen pops with a vibrancy that really shines on screen. It really does sound and look like a homage to a long gone era in gaming.
The amount of enjoyment you will get out of Pixel Heroes will depend on how adept you are at RPG’s. I am sure there are many gamers out there who will thrive in Pixel Heroes environment but for me it became more a game of chance than skill. Every fight you engage in seems totally random so for an unseasoned RPG player like myself it was hard to change tactics to suit the situation. With a price point of £7.99 there is a lot of enjoyed to be had here if you're prepared to put up with the high level of difficulty. There is a surprising amount of humour here but in the end it all became to frustrating for me.
Developer: The Bitfather
Publisher: Headup Games
Website: Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic
Twitter: @HeadupGames / @bitfathergames
Review code supplied by HeadUp Games