Damn, I have a heck of a hard time deciding how to rate games like They Bleed Pixels. On one hand, they have a charming presentation, with a cutesy story behind them, some decent gameplay, and clearly lots of love put into it. On the other hand, there are some baffling design flaws that drag the experience down quite a bit.

In simple terms, this game is an Eldritch horror rage platformer. You have to traverse surreal platforming levels full of obstacles as a cute little girl turned into a demon by a creepy book. You can fight enemies with your claws and kick, and you can collect tokens to create your own checkpoints as you go. Levels are often open-ended, rewarding exploration with some special collectibles.

The main story levels have some interludes where you get cute spooky cutscenes telling the game's story without any dialog, and I really like those. Also, there's some "guest levels", made by developers of other games, as a bit of a treat. I really like the "ponycorn" one, the contrast between the grim setting of the game and the cutesy aesthetic of the level just works, especially with the bopping music in the back.

The things keeping They Bleed Pixels from being a 5/5 in my book are some really simple design flaws that dumbfound me. Stuff that could be easily fixed.

Firstly, the developers seem unaware that controllers have more than two buttons nowadays. Is it really necessary to assign the kick and the claws to the same button? More often than not, when running from a wall of incoming saws, I'd end up clawing stuff when I meant to kick, or vice-versa, which led to a lot of very frustrating deaths.

Second, there is a point past which a fair challenge becomes frustration for the sake of frustration. This is coming from a person that normally likes hard games. This game has rather janky physics that require some annoyingly accurate button presses in some situations, and the unnecessarily tight platforming on top of that only makes it more frustrating. This is why I characterize this game as a "rage platformer". There are also some (thankfully not too many) situations where it is darn near impossible to react to what's coming unless you already memorized the section.

Still, this is a good game despite those flaws. I would not call it great, but definitely good.