Best Pixel Art Games 2025

Pixel art seems to never go out of style as newer games try to capture the look and feel of classic platformers, adventure games, strategy RPGs, and more.

However, many of these titles end up surpassing their 8 and 16-bit predecessors’ when it comes to stage size, game mechanics, illumination, etc.

In this list, we’ll highlight the top pixel art games to play in 2025, specifically contemporary video games that use pixel-based art to achieve their desired look.

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Related:Best Platformer Games 2025Best Games for Low Spec PCsBest Indie Games On Nintendo Switch 2025

In Potion Permit, players find themselves transported to the tiny town of Moonbury, a charming villager that has always been cautious of the outside world.

Taking on the role of a chemist, you’ll help cure the mayor’s daughter and persuade the residents of Moonbury of the wonders of contemporary alchemy.

To be successful, you’ll have to first gain their confidence by tending to villagers’ needs ranging from brewing remedies to battling monsters to enhancing the town.

All the while, you’ll find yourself taking breaks to absorb the scenery and spend time exploring, fishing, and playing with your loyal dog companion.

With a pixel art style reminiscent of the Game Boy Color, Prodigal is an enticing 2D adventure game inspired by The Legend of Zelda.

You play as a pickaxe-wielding explorer who decides to strike out on their own in a vibrant world overrun with monsters, perplexing dungeons, and friendly townsfolk.

Prodigal offers an engrossing story that’s made even better due to its romance system in which players can win the hearts of various NPCs.

This adds an extra layer to the gameplay experience that results in a captivating dungeon-crawling adventure that pixel art fans won’t want to miss.

Next on our list is Songs of Conquest, a turn-based strategy adventure game that blends RPG, tactical combat, and kingdom management with stunning pixel art.

It observes players constructing an army and harnessing ancient mystical powers to conquer lands nearby and distant as they expand their empire.

There are a wide selection of maps and biomes to explore, each housing its own brand of enemies and loot that can be used to improve your troops’ combat performance.

What’s more, Songs of Conquest includes two single-player campaigns along with online PvP multiplayer.

If you’re looking for a bite-sized strategy game with a pixelated art style, look no further than Pierre Vandermaesen’s tactical RPG Tinyfolks.

In it, players assemble a team of champions from various villagers with distinct weapons, abilities, and backgrounds before heading off into battle.

The goal of the game is to defeat creatures and use resources gathered to upgrade your small town.

Tinyfolks features over 20 classes, 13 unique biomes, and over 70+ enemies along with several bosses that will test your might.

In Little Witch in The Woods, players take on the role of a witch named Ellie as she completes her magical apprenticeship.

Along with learning the ins and outs of witch school, they’ll get to make new friends, gather materials, craft potions, and explore unique areas.

Environments and characters are portrayed with delightful pixel art that’s further complemented by relaxing gameplay.

The game is fantastic for casual play and has a ton of small little details and secrets that encourage you to take your time exploring.

What Eastward may lack in compelling gameplay it more than makes up for in the visual department, specifically its pixel art presentation.

Developer Pixpil managed to create an remarkably detailed 2D world whose environments feel genuinely inhabited.

The game’s story centers on the duo John and Sam, a silent yet powerful man and lively young girl that leave their underground community looking for answers.

Eastward takes its time setting up its compelling narrative and relatable characters while keeping players engaged with its detailed art design.

People who enjoy 2D sandbox survival games will surely discover something to appreciate about Core Keeper, an independent game with remarkable pixel art visuals.

In it, players set out to explore an underground cavern teeming with mystery and danger using only their mining tools.

The objective of the game is to build a base, gather resources, and craft valuable items while discovering new areas, bosses, and shortcuts.

Where Core Keeper stands out is its enhanced focus on co-op, allowing up to 8 players to collaborate together to accomplish their objectives.

Unsighted is a top-down indie action RPG that sees you playing as a cyber-enhanced automaton in a bleak world run by machines.

After embarking on their adventure, players will traverse visually breathtaking sci-fi environments using special powers to defeat enemies and reveal hidden pathways.

The game offers challenging combat with arduous bossfights, precise platforming, and a deep arsenal of wieldable weapons.

If not for anything else, Unsighted is worth playing through to be rewarded with intense sci-fi visuals and storytelling that’s further enhanced by beautiful pixel art.

Blurring the line between 2D and 3D, ANNO: Mutationem is a stylish cyberpunk action RPG that drops players in a vibrant neon-soaked city.

In it, you play as Ann: a highly-skilled operative tasked with exploring a vast metropolis dominated by soulless mega-corporations.

Gameplay combines 3D exploration with 2D side-scrolling hack and slash combat that focuses on melee attacks, long-range weapons, and more.

Mutationem’s exceptional pixel art is truly a sight to behold and will keep your eyes glued to the screen from start to finish.

While it can be easy to write off RPG maker games for their lack of innovation, especially when it comes to visuals, Omori proves the opposite can be true as well.

Heavily inspired by Earthbound, the game presents itself as a vintage-style pixel art RPG centered on a melancholy boy and his many adventures with friends and strangers.

The protagonist is constantly questioning the nature of his friendships and putting himself down while struggling to recall crucial parts of his enigmatic past.

Over time, players will come to realize things aren’t as they seem as they begin unraveling mysteries via turn-based battles and exploratory sequences.

Flynn: Son of Crimson is an indie action-adventure game that boasts colorful 2D pixel art characters and lively settings.

Players take on the role of the titular Flynn along with his companion Dex as the pair set out to save their home from a dark malevolent force.

The game features a robust combat system that allows Flynn to use a broad array of weapons, abilities, and attacks to defeat his foes.

Additionally, it offers Metroidvania-inspired progression with comprehensive exploration using unique tools that Flynn picks up along the way.

What a better a game to include than the one-man devoted project, Stardew Valley, developed by Eric Barone, aka ConcernedApe.

Inspired by the beloved Harvest Moon games, the game is presented as a 2D farming sim with some light RPG mechanics and colorful pixel art graphics.

In it, you create your own character and set out to bring your grandfather’s old farm back to life by gathering seeds, planting crops, and selling them for a profit.

Eventually, the game opens up and lets you explore extra areas such as ranching, wine-making, cooking, and more.

Black Skylands is a pixel art sandbox game that casts you as Captain of a skyship exploring an immense open-world comprised of floating islands high up in the clouds.

Gameplay revolves around building up your vessel and arming yourself before setting out to battle groups of pirates and creatures to claim territories for yourself.

Along the way, you encounter varied resources and crafting materials that allow you to upgrade your weapons, gear, and skyship.

Skylands’ sandbox world also boasts a collection of random events such as aerial combat encounters and village distress calls, as well as a base-building component.

Blending twin-stick shooting, tower defense gameplay, and pixel art, Rogue Star Rescue offers a fresh take on roguelike bullet hell shooters.

You play as a hero blasting their way through different planets while rescuing teammates and laying out traps for your defensive strategy.

Like many roguelikes, the story is nonlinear, allowing you to focus on mastering Rogue Star’s countless intricacies and outcomes by taking on challenges across the immense galaxy.

It’s certainly the type of game you can sink about 50 hours in and keep discovering new things; more so if you take on the co-op campaign with 1-4 players.

Huntdown is a fantastic side-scrolling arcade shooter with over-the-top action and comedic undertones complemented by gratifying game mechanics.

In it, you play as a bounty hunter tasked with liberating their sophisticated city from a criminal underworld of thugs who have overwhelmed the local police.

The game sees you traversing 20 filthy, neon-soaked levels inspired by 80s cityscapes as you track down gang leaders to collect the bounty on their heads.

Levels and characters are depicted in 16-bit pixel art graphics complete with hand-drawn animations, fluid 60 FPS performance, and a synth-heavy soundtrack.

Part tactical RPG and tower defense game, The Last Spell is another roguelike retro art game that sees you protecting the last pillar of humanity with an army of heroes.

Gameplay is divided into day and night cycles, with days spent rebuilding and placing fortifications in your city, and nights spent waging war with infernal creatures.

Survival requires a careful blend of magic and brute force as you devise unique strategies to squash out different enemy types by exploiting their weaknesses.

Your heroes can be leveled up to enhance their abilities and unlock more potent weapons that will inch you closer and closer to reclaiming the world.

It’s not often we get a pixel art rhythm game that combines RPG mechanics with excellent story-telling and a potent soundtrack.

Set in a peculiar world where everything is not quite what it seems, Everhood sees you controlling a wooden doll whose arm has been taken by a blue gnome.

As you set off on a quest to retrieve your arm by completing a series of musical battles, you’ll encounter a diverse bunch of characters and unexpected twists and turns.

The entire journey will take you about 5-6 hours to complete but there’s also a personalized battle editor where you can spend hours creating your own scenarios.

Rhythm Doctor is another unique pixel art rhythm game that starts off with a rather intriguing premise.

You play as a doctor treating ill patients by defibrillating in time to their heartbeats, requiring you to learn each patient’s unique rhythm while defeating boss viruses.

During the rhythm mini-game, the screen may become inundated with psychedelic visual and audio effects that force you to keep track and envision the beat in your head.

Like Everhood, it offers an extensive level editor and an addictive soundtrack comprised of heart-pumping, soul-soothing music.

When discussing ‘must play’ pixel art games,  Celeste is one that undoubtedly comes to mind.

The universally acclaimed 2D action-platformer manages to strike the perfect balance between gameplay and story, although some may find its default difficulty a bit overwhelming.

In it, you play as a girl looking to escape the struggles of everyday life by climbing a mysterious mountain.

Players advance the story by completing a series of hand-crafted platforming levels that revolve around precise jumping and dashing.

Octopath Traveler is a turn-based RPG from Square Enix that takes pixel art to imaginative heights with its distinctive ‘HD-2D’ aesthetic.

Complementing the game’s distinctive look is a lengthy 60-hour campaign spread across eight playable characters that come from vastly different backgrounds.

Combat is played out using traditional turn-based battle mechanics in which characters use special class-based abilities and talents.

Battles are where Octopath Traveler’s pixel art truly comes to life, showcasing the game’s vibrant shadows, lighting, and particle effects.

Dead Cells is a pixel art game that focuses on combat and exploration as you traverse randomly created labyrinths.

Each run sees you gathering materials to craft superior gear as you hunt down formidable bosses and minions throughout a vast 2D labyrinth.

Upon dying, players are returned to the starting area with slightly more resources than their prior run, eliciting a risk vs. reward approach to progressing further.

Interestingly, the game is actually rendered in 3D but uses a 2D perspective to trick you into thinking you’re playing a side-scrolling pixel-based platformer.

In Papers, Please, you play as an immigrant inspector on the border of Arstotzka, a nation experiencing elevated levels of diplomatic tension with its neighboring countries.

As the story progresses, things get a lot more challenging as the application requirements to enter Arstotzka become increasingly complex.

Things also start to seep over into your character’s private life, with both your family and livelihood at risk of being stripped away.

This is all delivered in pixel art graphics that rely on a restricted color palette that reflects the game’s atmosphere and mood.

Carrion is a 2D reverse-horror action-platformer that sees you controlling a creature on a violent rampage to kill its captors and escape confinement.

The game features a ton of incredible monster-based abilities that complement its metroidvania design and are exciting to explore.

This includes being able to grow or shrink in size in order to squeeze through the tightest air ducts government funding can buy.

The monster can also grab and fling both objects and humans using their robust tendril-like arms and slip through cracks to unlock new areas.