Included with Stadia Pro starting March 1, 2021
In a rollercoaster ride of an announcement today, there’s an otherworldly new PixelJunk game coming out on March 1, and it isn’t a sequel, which excites me – but only Stadia players will be able to try it out.
This new roguelike action-adventure game, PixelJunk Raiders, will “launch exclusively” on Stadia. It’ll be available on the streaming platform for $20, or freely playable with a Stadia Pro subscription. Drat.
It’s honestly a bummer to see one of my favorite studios tied down to a single platform like this, doubly so in the aftermath of Google unceremoniously ditching its internal Stadia development studios.
As for the game itself, I’m intrigued but not necessarily sold. The footage shown today depicts alien-slashing action gameplay in a vividly stylized procedural landscape. A little context: you’re a “human replicant searching for habitable worlds and optimizing your DNA for survival.” You know, the usual.
It’s not a one-to-one comparison by any means, but I hope PixelJunk Raiders doesn’t suffer a tragic fate like The Tomorrow Children, an unforgettable communal PS4 game that lives on in our memories.
I’m happy as long as Q-Games can keep making games, I just hope this deal doesn’t last forever.
