


This is all about being surprised and laughing out loud. Yeah, it’s idiotic, but that’s why this game is so much fun. What does work is jumping out the window, where McPixel gets up, runs Wile-E-Coyote-style to the front of the speeding locomotive, and pushes it to slow it down so no one dies. You could kick someone, but it doesn’t help. You could also flush the fish down a toilet, but it turns out for no other reason than to tick off the action in the level’s 100% list. Click on the fishbowl and McPixel dives head-first into it, then curls up inside the water, while the train flies off the tracks to everyone’s death. Pick up the fish, and yes, that’s OK, doesn’t end the level. So, having played any point-n-click game ever, you assume you should put the fish in the bowl. In your carriage are a couple of people, one of them sat holding an empty fish bowl on her lap. For instance, you might be on a train that’s, probably, hurtling to its doom. The joy of McPixel is just clicking on stuff and then watching the stupid shit that follows. Each is a ridiculous and confusing scenario, with the goal opaque, and the means to reach it rarely logical. In the process, you find any of as many as a dozen “incorrect” endings, with the incentive to go back and 100% them later.

The format is much the same: each level a collection of six mini-levels, each played in rotation until you find the “correct” solution for any, whittling them down until all six are ticked off. Where once it was a game about solving around 100 nonsensical levels via linear progression, now it’s a game about solving around 100 nonsensical puzzles from a central hub world! Fortunately, the 20-second puzzles themselves are still focused on kicking things, weeing on stuff, and kicking things you just weed on. Given the passing ten years, you’ll not be surprised to learn that McPixel has matured as a concept.
