I'm a little bit late to the party on this one. I didn't even notice game existed until this morning when I was checking my twitter feed and I saw that Justin Davis (@ErrorJustin) tweeted that he had completed the game. I checked it out in the App Store and it seemed interesting, so I downloaded it and I've been playing it for a couple hours.
Gameplay:
The basic premise of Pixel People is that it is a city building simulator with a strong focus on the citizens within that city and the jobs that they have. A lot of the city building aspects are abstracted out - you basically only have control over building placements and what buildings you construct. The core gameplay mechanic of Pixel People revolves around splicing together professions to create new ones.
You begin the game with the Mayor and the Mechanic. The Mayor is employed in the Town Hall and the Mechanic is employed in the Arrival Center (this is where new blank, clone Pixel People arrive to be spliced into a profession and shipped out into the city - quite dystopian.) From these two professions you splice new professions together. The Mayor + Mechanic becomes an Engineer, which requires a new type of building to be employed in. Each building that you plop down costs "Land Points", which are limited, but can be expanded via purchase with the in-game currency (looks like gold coins). You must also construct residential buildings to house your spliced citizens.
The primary way in which you earn gold is via the actual buildings that you construct and the money that they earn over time. So, in many ways, this is also an "idle game" of sorts. You continue this cycle of earning money, expanding your land, splicing new professions and plopping down new building types until, seemingly, you unlock all the splices (295 of them) and "win the game."
Like all Free-to-Play games with in-app purchases, there is the "regular" currency, and then the special, more rare, currency, which is used to speed up splicing, building construction, etc. This game is no different, but I didn't find myself using the special currency all that much, and I was able to get through a good chunk (50 or so) spliced professions without really needing to speed anything up or purchase more gold.
Graphics:
As the name implies, Pixel People is a game with animated pixel art for graphics. I'm not a connoisseur of pixel art, but from what I can see, it is well done. It is very detailed and it's interesting to see your city come together as you start to build more and more buildings.
While looking at screenshots of other's cities, I did notice that I should have better planned/layed-out my city. I took the approach of "plop it down where there's room" rather than trying to lay down roads and structure city blocks. To be fair though, roads cost $1000 gold per tile, and I was strapped for cash the whole game. It is amazing what some of the better-designed cities can look like though.
Sound:
The sound in the game is pretty well done. The music is light and upbeat but doesn't interfere with the overall gameplay, and doesn't get overly-repetitive. It reminds me of simple SimCity/Maxis-styled overview music with that pixely/16-bit charm.
The sound effects are also very well done - little chimes and whistles and bells that go off during various gameplay moments are nice and add to the cuteness factor of the experience.
Issues:
I did have some issues while playing the game. The game supports logging in via Facebook in order to upload your saved game progress and continue it on another device. I tested this out between my iPhone and iPad and I was able to continue the game on each device, which is very convenient. However, the game consistently crashed when I tried to enter the city screen after having synced my progress. It did happen quite often, but it didn't put me off the game. Maybe that's just because I'm patient.
I also found it annoying that logging into Facebook required me to actually type my username and password into a pop-up facebook login screen, rather than using iOS's built-in social networking frameworks.
I also found it inconvenient to have to go through the main title screen every single time I opened up the game from the background. Having to sync with Facebook/and or confirm that "No, I don't want to sync with Facebook" before getting the actual gameplay city screen is an annoyance that probably could have been avoided with a little more thought and polish.
Summary:
Overall I have to say I'm pretty satisfied with picking up this game and trying it out for a couple of hours, especially since it's free. It's fun to splice together the different professions to see how you can make new ones. It's a very humorous game as well - from the wacky profession splicing to the default names given to each of the professions. As I progressed in the game however, it does look like it'll be a considerable time sink in order to complete all 295 profession splices along with the other gameplay elements I didn't touch on (animals, missions, etc.) I'll probably play for a couple more hours and then toss this one on the shelf.
