Azurephile gives this a "Meh" on the Ghost Scale
It’s not amazing, it’s not bad. This is ok but you may want to choose another title.
Azurephile gives this a "Meh" on the Ghost Scale
It’s not amazing, it’s not bad. This is ok but you may want to choose another title.
Review

  • Not really recommended

  • Minecraft meets Ark: Survival Evolved

  • Magic and quests
Minecraft meets Ark: Survival Evolved
in a new Early Access game called PixArk. At first, I thought it was a mod for Ark, but I was wrong. Apparently Snail Games bought Studio Wildcard years ago and therefore has the IP rights to Ark. The game looks as though everything was made of Lego blocks, it actually looks a lot like a game called Portal Knights.

One of the limitations of Ark is that you can’t dig into the ground, but you can do so in PixArk, giving it a Minecraft feel. It also creates randomly generated maps, which can be troublesome because a map could be created missing certain biomes. Unlike Minecraft (Java version), the maps have their size limitations. Players can also find portals that can be used to get around the map.

Magic is something not seen in Ark, but is used in this game. There are magical creatures, which can only be tamed via magic. There is a magical forest biome, where you can get materials needed for magical crafting.

The game play is pretty much just like Ark, where players can connect to servers and play with others in PVE or PVP environments. But, there is also a single player mode and players can even create their own dedicated server.

Something else in the game that’s not seen in Ark are quests. There are quest boxes around the map. They may be something such as “tame a phioma with a purple berry” or “gather 10 dirt.” Upon completion, players will be presented with a chest containing some rewards. It’s a nice addition that gives player something to do.

The game is in Early Access and is not without its bugs and issues. However, it seems pretty stable on “epic” settings. Portals and supply drops are currently missing in single player mode, so I decided to create a dedicated server to play on. Looking in the game’s guides on Steam, I was able to find instructions on how to create and run a dedicated server. Unfortunately, it didn’t work right away, but I did manage to some how get it working. This is something I imagine may get some more attention in the future.

*Update 6/4/19*
I just thought I'd add in an update here for my thoughts and feelings about this game. At first, I was kind of excited for this game. I love Ark and figured more of it would be enjoyable. However, for some reason that's really difficult to describe, I'm not really into this game. As of this update version 1.0 has been released, but I stopped caring about the game a while ago. I tried to play it a few times. I think perhaps the art style wasn't very appealing to me. It does kind of look like Minecraft, but it's not Minecraft. It does kind of behave like Minecraft, in that you can dig into the world, unlike in Ark. However, as of the last time I tried to play this game, there's no variation in how each species of creatures look. In Ark, for example, you can find 10 Pteranodons and almost all of them will look different. Some might be mostly green, or some might be mostly pink or other colors. That is not the case with PixArk, unfortunately. All creatures of one species look exactly the same. I didn't find this very appealing. I also didn't like the music of the game. I think there are some people out there that did like this game, check for those on YouTube. For me, though, this game just isn't very appealing.