Pixel Empires

Pixel Empires is an idle tower defense game set in a pixel fantasy kingdom. Your village gathers resources, your army fights automatically, your tower fires arrows and your spells cast themselves. You can take control to aim the tower and time spell combos, or let the kingdom fight while you plan upgrades. Hundreds of units can clash at 60 FPS.

Build and defend

Workers automatically chop wood, mine gold and herd meat. Your army battles on its own, while the tower fires automatically until you take control. Waves continue without a game over, and every five waves a modifier changes the rules. Modifiers include Burning Ground, Armored Horde, Glass Cannon and Necromancer. Dynamic difficulty responds to how quickly you clear waves, sending elite squads when you advance quickly and easing the pressure when you struggle.

Enemies advance in five company formations: Crescent, Shield Wall, Wedge, Pincer and Fan. They keep formation as they march toward your line, then breach it wave by wave. Bosses arrive every fifth wave, and every 25th wave brings a screen-filling Titan that telegraphs attacks, charges, dashes through your ranks and flings soldiers into the air. The game has 18 enemies, 17 special abilities—including web shots, ground slams, exploding dynamite and shell guards—and six mutations.

Spells and progression

You can build a spell deck with three slots, expandable to 10, from 30 spells across nine elements: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Holy, Poison, Dark, Earth, Water and Special. The spells combine across elements in 15 ways, including Apocalypse Drop, Absolute Zero, Superconductor and Golden Execution. Ultimate spells fill the screen.

Troops grow stronger as they fight, progressing through Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond and further color tiers without a final tier. Each run also offers choices from a pool of 36 roguelike perks. When you end a reign, prestige earns permanent Crowns to spend across nine uncapped Crown Shop tracks.

Long-term upgrades

A 16-node skill tree spans three branches, with 59 upgrades. You can research enemies and take Plague Covenant pacts. The game also has four unit types, four player formations, more than 100 achievements and leaderboards. Waves have no endpoint, and the climb continues from the first wave onward.

Game details

Pixel Empires is a single-player PvE game. It supports 30 languages and uses Steam Cloud. The description also notes that it has no pay-to-win mechanics or microtransactions.