Last updated on February 16th, 2026 at 05:30 pm
Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic – Adventure Game Review
Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic is a Adventure/Roleplaying game from Headup GmbH, first launched in 5th March 2015.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 27+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic Stand Out
„Listen! The end is nigh!! Hear my words and prepare! An ancient cult has set foot in our lands! They call themselves -The Sons of Dawn- and pray to some dark elder god. They have started recruiting people for their cause all over the country. I fear that they want to try to awaken something which should be left sleeping. Something dangerous and sinister! Something that might destroy us all. Spend your last of days wisely…“
Enter the world of PIXEL HEROES and prepare yourself for a thrilling RPG/Roguelike experience like you have never seen before!
Explore a randomized world full of hilarious events, deadly dungeons and the weirdest NPCs you will ever meet in a game!
Choose three heroes for your party and take them on a journey that will be completely different each time you start a new game. Bath in a pool of procedurally generated loot and defeat the evil forces that threaten the township of Pixton!
Features:
- 30 unique hero classes to unlock, each with individual skills and attributes.
- More procedurally generated axes, spears, maces, swords, shields, bows, crossbows, spells and prayers than a lama has hair on its body.
- 13 mystic and beautifully cruel dungeons to explore. With epic bossfights waiting!
- 3 campaigns to unlock, each with its own final dungeon and boss.
- Permadeath! You know you want it.
- A detailed graveyard where you can mourn your dead heroes, compare their statistics and see which of their choices led to their tragic death.
- Completely crazy NPCs, each one of them with a significant storyline that you can follow to unlock cool stuff!
- Tons of random events that you will encounter on your way, expecting you to make important choices. Will you yell at the cat like a crazy idiot?
- Many achievements and unlockables, try to get them all and become the most badass Pixel Heroes player in the world!
This Adventure game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 11th September 2015
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
- Added portrait mode
- Fixed minor bugs
Download & Availability
Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Ive played this title across this will be our fourth platform. We enjoy it immensely and cannot recommend it enough. Great pick up and play nostalgia-inducing RPG. And for this price you cant afford not to buy this.
Absolutely love this game! It's very challenging. Best part is the graphics.
Outstanding game made in respectful homage to (arguably) that greatest generation of games. Love the reference to PoolRad. Starting second quest now.
We FRIGGIN LOVE THIS GAME!! Im just sad it took so long for us to find this excellent game! Its been out for years and deserves to live on forever! Good retro style RPGs are hard to find these days but this is the only one you really need. Hire 3 fantasy themed characters and delve into dungeons, collect loot, and beat the bosses! Return to the village to revive heroes, visit the blacksmith, or pick up missions because there is plenty to do here. Of course, upgrades are aplenty and cameos are waiting to make there appearances. THIS DEFINITELY MAKES MY TOP 5 FOR RPGs ON THE APPSTORE!!! We HIGHLY recommend this one! ***Only one request for the developers: please dont let this game die.
This game is very fun but difficult which is what we like a lot about it. The game also has random events that happen which makes the play ability very unique.
Old school and good pacing of difficulty that'll keep you on your toes. Really in depth and whole lot of customization! We loving this game.
Hello we absolutely LOVE this game but it crashes about once every ten minutes. Are there any solutions / fix? Im playin on an iPad 6 generation FYI.
We love these type of games. You have to prepare for each dungeon to be successful. One thing we don't like are the mini encounters before you get to a dungeon. They can become repetitive. However, they are a small part of the game. Also, there is no exploration. You are pretty much on a rail after you exit the town. That being said, we definitely recommend this game.
This game has given us many hours of fun and challenging playtime. The premise is simple: choose 3 heroes and defeat 8 bosses to achieve a victory. The gameplay however is quite complex; it is turn based combat like final fantasy, the enemies inflict deadly status effects, bosses are strong with few weaknesses, and death is permanent. That last part might seem scary but it really adds to the game. With 30 characters part of the fun for us is to beat the game with 3 new characters each time. After using some of the stronger classes (especially healing ones) it becomes much harder to beat the game. This is definitely one of the best games we've played on our iPhone and would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys RPGs, roguelikes, lots of classes,or just a good challenge. Edit: Also to people complaining about not bringing the right sword use the neutral element (magic is best by itself, physical with armor beak).
It took us a few deaths to figure out the best way to play the game, but once we did we were finally able to go through dungeons like a snap and finish up quests. The humor is pretty funny. And when you find that special armor or weapon for your adventurers it's just an awesome feeling. The game is a bit pricey, but you get a lot in one game plus there's no IAP hovering around.
Please make Game Center Achievements worth more than 1pt per achievement. 5 pts is usually the minimum. Id appreciate it if it was possible to earn up to at least 500pts when adding up all the achievements. As far as the gameplay… It's fun. Aquiring gear and fighting bad guys is the perfect game. The fact It's way over priced though. $2 would be reasonable.
Sorry guys. We thought, for the high price, this game would be vast and fun. It is neither. The confusing, repetitive, and frustratingly unforgiving gameplay makes for an extremely not-fun experience. We do not recommend this game to anyone and wish we could get a refund.
There's 2 problems: Bugs & Randomness of enemies. Your party doesn't have an immunity to (A)? Well the boss of this dungeon uses it & you're screwed if you aren't immune. So you managed to beat the boss without that immunity? Well your save filed messed up so all you see now is an empty black square instead of your game. Congratulations.
Just beat all three campaigns. Love this game. It was well worth the 7 bucks. Please add more content! Only suggestions we have are to add a greater variety of unique loot for all of the bosses, open the casino as a reward for beating insane mode, and To create a fourth campaign that's random but keeps increasing the difficulty on every play through. Thanks for a great game guys.
People complaining on here must be young, complaining about no tutorials and how hard it is. HA! We have been waiting for a game like this, and it is THE BEST, most fleshed out game we have played on the iPad in general, no less this genre. Soooo many different an fun hero types to unlock. Awesome loot and customization options, and a relatively brisk turn-based battle system makes this our go to game for days on end. Probably logged 20 hours in three days. We haven't been this much into a game since we got Final Fantasy II (USA SNES version) for Christmas when we were 11.
This game is an awesome hardcore RPG so we recommended for people that don't care to die a lot because u learn from that (bad thing is the items are the same and u do win a lot of gold but we're can we spend it we does need more updates that's what's taking the 5 star away).
This is a great little game. Lots of humor poking fun at old RPGs and pop culture. We're not sure why these people are complaining about dying. We haven't died yet and we're 6 quests into the game. It's rogue like, so there is permadeath. Just get some gold and revive your character. Typical RPG stuff so we're not sure why they are complaining. With tons of contents, and no in app purchases, this is a great buy for near 7 bucks. We REPEAT no IAP. The devs have to make a few bucks guys. Why are there so many cheap gamers on IOS?! Someone also complained about instructions and what defeats what. Welcome to old school RPGs circa 1980s! The days when there was no hand holding, and these types of games were hard! There is a help menu in the equipment screen that shows all of these things if you took time to look for it! We highly recommend this game for old school RPGers. This game originally came out on Steam for PCs and has done well. Watch some reviews and trailers for the game and you will see its a jewel. Devs if you are reading this, don't change a thing. Game is perfect as is.
We've had a blast playing this witty old-school RPG! We don't consider it too hard at all. You have to get the right set-up of characters, skills and then equip appropriate gear, debuffs, etc. Best money we've spent on a game in the App Store in a year.
Not sure why people are struggling with this game — maybe because they have never played classic CRPG's from the C64 Days. We finished the first Dungeon with our Party intact. Loved the Challenge and love the game. Stay away if you are an entitled crybaby otherwise if you appreciate Retro RPG's then dive in and have a blast.
This game starts on hard mode with increasing more difficult modes to unlock so you know what you're getting into right away. There is humor here and all of the fun of a good old party forming skill building loot finding turn based combat rpg. Really enjoying it so far kinda wish perma death was at least optional Edit: a tutorial would be nice especially an explanation of combat and various status effects (what are they? How do they affect each other?) some status effect curing potions /spells would be nice as it's the darn status effects that tend to take us out and while the armor that provides immunity to certain effects is nice we are almost never wearing the one we need at the time we need it.
This game is awesome,but it comes with a price.No,not that price,we mean the emotional price.Your going to rage quit.A lot.
Characters shouldn't die permanently!!! Not fair and very frustrating!!!!! We really like the game accept for that.
Everyone should have this game. We did not understand this game at first. We actually deleted it. We are so glad we gave it one more try. Our advice is make sure you complete a quest. You can revive your dead heroes at the temple afterwards.
We've been playing this all night shift. We wouldn't call it a roguelike, but it is a randomized RPG, and it seems less hilarious and more pomo for the sake of weirdness. And also it's lots of fun. Similar to a strictly turn-based Deep Dungeons of Doom, if you've played that. Highly recommended.
Expensive but we'd say worth it.
Pretty fun, can be overwhelming sometimes and its very confusing at first. Other than that its great and super fun.
Guess we're one of the rare few that understands this game so we assume that it's not for people who have never played a strategy game or for those who don't understand basic rpg mechanics. It's very good, although rather bland after awhile, needs more spell types and weapon types sure the random prefixes add to it but a handful of prefixes on a handful of weapons only gets so far, blowpipes slingshots throwing stars just a few off the top of our head for ranged, flails nunchucks katanas cudgels a few for melee. Would be cool to see different effects on weapons such as "giants club" hits 1+2 enemy's with great strength however is slow so your attack is after the enemy's or something. Tons of potential for expansion.
This game is rough especially starting out but the quality is there and it shows.
This game has some enjoyable elements. We guarantee the people who review and say "you are crybabies and you haven't played video games like this before" are either idiots or the developers up-rating. There is lots to be said for upping the difficulty, but to make it uber hard to the point of losing because you don't know what to expect each quest is lame and unfun. There's no strategy or skill involved in dying on a quest bc you picked the wrong set of guys, which you can't change between quests. Game is worth about 2.99 not 6.99. For some reason people think that a like of in app purchases automatically means they should charge 5$ more for it. We're also a sucker cause we obviously bought it.
We really like this game, but it would make a lot of sense to add a way for the party to turn back once they've started a quest. It's too easy to get yourself into a position where it's effectively impossible to win but have to wait out several battles for the final blow to fall.
The game is good but the difficulty can be stressful. It should have a easier setting for more casual relaxing RPG play and quests for grinding before you head out to a dungeon.
Hard to read the screen – poor utilization of screen real estate. (we have a 6 plus!) also saved file feta corrupted. We were on the fifth quest and we try to load and it is black with a border and nothing else.
During a fight with enemies, they're capable of attacking 3 times if they have all three enemies alive. This is highly unfair to the players, or at least to us. Some others may agree, and we're not saying this game isn't worth it, we're saying it's not worth 7.00$ You should be able to attack with all players every turn. This would even the odds in our book.
This game is really fun, at first. The problem that soon reared its ugly head is that there are no side quests to earn XP and upgrade characters before you quest to dungeons. Basically you buy what you can with 800 and hope that your first quest is an easy one since once you quest and go into a dungeon, there is no way to leave unless your whole party dies or you defeat the boss. Also, why can't you use potions during battle?? So we have to keep a dedicated healing spell on someone? Insta death when a character is not able to use their attacks to the fullest potential. Lastly, the rock, paper, scissors game element is very confusing as shown in the help screen. What beats what? More side quests, more instructions please.
There are many battles where you stalemate. Your weapon is resisted and you heal. We gave up on the big boss after 200 rounds with us both at full health.
Not an easy game, or even with easy options. Made it through the first dungeon, but not being able to leave a dungeon to revive party members made the second dungeon total-party-kill. Not very fun for the price. Also wasn't made for the iPhone's screen ratio, so everything's tiny and hard to touch.
We took a chance on the game when there were no reviews posted. Our expectations must have been too high. We like the random item generator and the humor through out, but it is just too dull. No story, you don't need to read the text scrolling by. We had thought it was an open world, but it isn't. 'Adventures' are done like on rails. Take the trail, see three weird or funny things and end up at the dungeon. Then 8 rooms in a line. Most are three monsters, though at least one comes up with a chest. No way out except kill the boss or when everyone dies. We must have hit the right sequence to build characters to make it to the fifth quest before our decent characters were taken apart. Bring the wrong sword and your fighter is wasted. But $7? Too much for too little. If they had a more open world, more to explore with a serious story then we'd feel better about the spend. If you are serious RPG fan, stay away. This is a waste of time and money.
The first quest is cool cause you're just getting used to it. But then the shortcomings and missing essentials of any RPG of this type start to show. This is NOT Darkest Dungeon, or even close to it. This feels very flimsy and cheap. We guess they really are trying to make an old game. The problem, old games had depth and a great story line. This truly feels more like a web browser game, sloppily put together with no depth. Too many missing things to explain. Buy it and regret.
A decent game, but it is in no way worth 7 dollars.
It would have been better without the perma death start over aspect. After six hours of getting nowhere we wrote it off as another waste of money and am very disappointed. Can clearly see the attraction of success but the game just beats you without recourse to keep going, no reason to struggle through one more time incase there is a better way, there just isn't….and if there is its not worth our time.
This game is crap, too hard. Can't even complete one quest because our characters die too quickly. In no way, shape, or form is this trash worth $7. We WANT A REFUND.
This game would be fun if it wasn't impossible. We have been playing games since Atari days and this game makes you star over from the beginning every time you die, which is most likely in the first dungeon. If not, enjoy your short lived victory, for you will certainly die in the next and have to begin this game from the very start. What a waste of 7 dollars.
Essentially no tutorial what's so ever. First quest, first dungeon, first party wiped out with a full healer and use of all potions in between each room. 2nd party, much stronger, better healer, awesome drops, died in first dungeon. Enemies attacks 2 to 3 times more than your party, you are unable access inventory during fights which means you can't even use a heal potion during a fight. How silly is that? Understand it's rough like, but when multiple parties can't last even the beginning its ridiculous (rough like does not mean impossible). When your party doesn't even stand a chance, it gets boring and old quick. After finally beating the first dungeon on numerous tries, one hero alive, the screen goes black, though game border can be seen, when hitting continue. Game bugged, progress impossible.. Refund requested.
We have been playing video games since Pong. This game is way to hard to begin with. We cannot seem to stay alive long enough to win a quest. Tried and tried. Is the point of this game to lose your money and become frustrated? Boring and a waste of money.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.361
- Size: 90.85 MB
- iOS: 5.1.1 or later
- Languages: EN, DE
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor, Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
- Developer: [Headup GmbH]()
Last updated: 11th September 2015 | Genre: Adventure, Roleplaying | Developer: Headup GmbH