Nostalgia can take a lot of different forms for different people. Regardless, there’s something about pixel art games that can make even people who grew up with GameCubes or Xbox 360s feel nostalgic for a time in gaming they may have never really experienced. Pixel art is beautiful in its simplicity. It’s so much more about feel than looks. Whatever specs your PC has (unless it's very, very old) it can run these games. Besides, the library is expansive enough that your options are almost limitless.

Related:Indie Games With The Best Replay Value

Pixel art has quickly become the way to make a game timeless, yet they manage to never feel dated. These games can be cute, funny and heartfelt, or grim, depressing and harsh. Sometimes, they can be all at once. Pixel art offers freedom for whatever story the developer wants to tell. You don’t always need high-fidelity textures to pull at heartstrings. You just need the right words.

Updated November 16, 2022 by Keitha Sims-Korba: The deluge of pixel art games is truly never-ending. With an ever-expanding library, it's almost impossible to list every notable pixel art game to grace our PCs. Still, with the recent additions of Potion Permit and Vampire Survivors to our game libraries, it was time to retread this hallowed ground. With the holiday season coming up (and potentially cold, gloomy weather, depending on where you are in the world), you may be looking for a few reasons to cuddle up to the blue light of your computer screen. You can hunker down with a soft, fuzzy game...or one full of carnage and neon lights. Either way, we've got you covered.

15 Potion Permit

Potion Permit screenshot showing the NPC Forrest and the player character.

A soft color palette and a (mostly) light-hearted adventure await you in Moonbury. Potion Permit, a game that rivals Stardew Valley in its good vibes quotient, puts you in the shoes of the Chemist, a potion-brewing medic from the far-flung and much-maligned capital city. Moonbury doesn’t take kindly to you at first, but that’s alright - you have plenty of time to win folks over.

While Potion Permit has a fair bit of combat, a necessity to forage in the wilds that border Moonbury, it’s also attuned to nature. You’re a chemist because you understand how to mix ingredients together. With a soft, natural color palette (except, perhaps, your hair color), Potion Permit brings to mind soft afternoon light and cozying up with a good book.

14 Katana Zero

Katana Zero Protagonist Zero Uses The Prism Sword In Chinatown

It is time for a bit of the old ultra-violence. Katana Zero is bloody and surreal, painting in neon strokes and synth beats, with the backdrop of a fully realized world. You are an assassin, unsure of your past or your future, the mystery unravelling before you. Still, one thing is certain: your boss needs your skills. You must leave no survivors and be meticulous in your planning. If you falter, you die.

RELATED: Best Uses Of Neon In Games

More than anything else, Katana Zero is fast. You see Zero, your character, zip across the screen, vibrant neon trailing his every move as he paints the walls with blood. Something so stylized can only be done with pixel art, playing to our nostalgia, even for eras we may have never experienced.

13 Backbone

Backbone on street in granville outside of cinema

You can find Howard Lotor, a raccoon Private Investigator, in the shadowed streets of a dystopian, futuristic Vancouver. The world is detailed and vibrant; you can practically smell the cheap cigarettes and bourbon. Luckily, Backbone gives you a lot of reasons to take in its impeccable aesthetic.

Where Backbone falters, it more than makes up for it in sheer style. We are so used to pixel art having a rigid quality, but Backbone seems to breathe with us. Its art deco architecture and shimmering neon lights build the kind of noir landscape you can lose yourself in.

12 Omori

Something behind Sunny in Omori

The world can be black and white, sometimes. At least, it can be to young shut-in, Sunny. In Omori, you guide Sunny, his alter-ego, the titular Omori, and a party of friends through a colorful dreamscape. However, everything is not as it seems - this dream world is nothing more than a pastel bandage over the greyscale nothingness that lives inside Sunny’s head.

RELATED: Anti-RPGs For Fans Of Undertale

Heavily inspired by Earthbound, Omori is a game that delves into loss, depression and guilt. Omori’s style ricochets between digital pixels and sketchy hand-drawn art. It uses both to full effect, somehow being both disarming and discordant.

11 Vampire Survivors

A screenshot of Vampire Survivors where the player is in the middle while enemies are surrounding them and being hit

Sadly, there are no actual vampires in Vampire Survivors. On the bright side, there are countless monsters to fight through, so not all is lost. Vampire Survivors is far from the most aesthetically pleasing pixel-art game, but who can argue how satisfying it is to play - and, more importantly, triumph over?

In Vampire Survivors, you are given a selection of characters with different abilities and placed in an arena with unending waves of aggressive creatures. Luckily, your chosen hunter attacks automatically - you just have to guide them. Compared to many pixel art games that prioritize long-form storytelling, Vampire Survivors thrives on its simple get-in and get-out playstyle.

10 Always Sometimes Monsters

Always Sometimes Monsters introduction apartment roof

Always Sometimes Monsters is an RPG that opens with a flashback to a birthday party, where you choose your protagonist and their significant other. Like many RPGs, Always Sometimes Monsters focuses heavily on player choice and the consequences. There is no supernatural angle to this game; it is just a high-drama personal tale where you will become highly aware of how your actions affect those around you. Whether you like it or not, sometimes you’re someone’s monster, and there’s no way to take that back.

9 Proteus

Proteus island at sunset

Sometimes, you just want a game that expects nothing of you. Proteus has no plot, no goals, and you don’t even really interact with anything. You just walk on a procedurally generated island and find the beauty in that isolated existence, in the nature that surrounds you—every step punctuated by dynamic music that changes depending on your surroundings.

No two walks in Proteus are the same; your sole motivation is the desire to keep going, take in the world, and find peace. It is both endless and limited, familiar yet new. So if you are looking for a moment of tranquility after a difficult day, Proteus is here for you.

8 Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley farm

Stardew Valley is one of the most popular pixel art games for a reason; it’s a lush world full of characters you will come to love. After a long day, coming home to your Stardew Valley farm is the perfect way to unwind and reset. Not that everything is always calm and happy in Pelican Town — you’ll find your sprite neighbors have their fair share of realistic issues, issues that don’t just go away because you helped them once. You have to find a beating heart in Stardew Valley for yourself.

Related:Stardew Valley Rarest Events Ranked

Still, it’s impossible to ignore how calming Stardew Valley can be. With its incredible soundtrack, numerous locations, and flexible schedule, it’s not hard to get lost in the game’s magic.

7 Celeste

Celeste screenshot where the main character is running through a colourful level

Some games take it easy on the emotional beats. Celeste is not one of them. Putting you in control of a young woman named Madeline who has resolved to climb the eponymous mountain, Celeste, this platformer expertly weaves its emotional core into its complex gameplay. It’s a game about the will to try, repeatedly, no matter how many times you fail. As Madeline climbs Celeste, you will find yourself growing with her as she grows more capable with every level. You and Madeline are in it together.

Of course, Celeste is also incredible to look at, boasts fun and challenging gameplay, and has a score that can draw tears from your eyes moments after making your heart soar. There are many pixel-art platformers, but if you’re going to pick one to play right now, pick Celeste.

6 Hotline Miami

Hotline Miami Intro With Chicken Mask

Hotline Miami breathes neon pixels and speaks only in grimy synth beats. In it, you play as a nameless man in an animal mask who is on a rampage against the mob, and you follow him as he begins to lose his grip on the world. Hotline Miami is violent, unsettling, and very surreal, and it owes a lot of that surreal nature to its use of pixel art. There just are some things that hyper-realism can’t portray. Hotline Miami understands that.

Related:Games To Play If You Like Hotline Miami

There are many things to love about Hotline Miami if you can stomach the violence. The synth soundtrack is iconic, the gameplay is fluid and fast, and it manages to pull off an intriguing story. In the years since its release, Hotline Miami has proven why it’s a modern classic.

5 Deltarune

Queen talking to Kris and Susie in Deltarune

Deltarune, the kind-of-maybe sequel to Undertale, has all the charm of its predecessor, just further refined. It is more reminiscent of older JRPGs from the Super Nintendo era, especially regarding the turn-based battle sequences. Deltarune improves upon its predecessor in almost every technical way, though whether it will shake the world the way Undertale did is still unclear.

Regardless of how it compares to Toby Fox’s first game, Deltarune is fun, heartfelt, and challenging. While Undertale was not shy about portraying dark themes even in pacifist runs, Deltarune fully embraces the shadowy side of its story. And it’s free, so there’s no excuse not to give it a shot.

4 Eastward

eastward combat

Eastward has a distinct Legend of Zelda feel to it, making it instantly familiar to anyone who has ever adventured in 2D Hyrule before. Armed with a frying pan, your main character John and his surrogate daughter Sam will travel through their underground home to the surface world and deal with obstacles, and the question of where Sam came from in the first place.

Related:Things We Wished We Knew Before Starting Eastward

The art is gorgeous, still maintaining that nostalgic aesthetic while being smoother and truer to life. With its fun, likable characters, its just-difficult-enough puzzles, and its vibrant world, Eastward is the perfect game for a Legend of Zelda fan who wants to branch into something with a more modern yet still whimsical setting.

3 Lisa

Lisa The Painful promotional art for Kickstarter

Lisa is a hard game in a lot of different ways. A brutal tale of trauma and the post-apocalypse, Lisa puts you in control of Brad, a middle-aged man who has become the guardian to the last surviving girl on earth, Buddy. While Brad is not the first character in video games to deconstruct the concepts of paternal protectiveness and violent masculinity, Lisa pulls no punches when it comes to making you face the reality of Brad and your actions.

Lisa is a game about reckoning with pain, abuse, and generational trauma, held together by its strong setting and intense character work. It makes you sacrifice yourself and your party to meet your goals, and it never lets up. Lisa is not for the faint of heart, but it is well worth your time.

2 Undertale

Undertale christmas

If there’s a game that begs you to go out and tell every one of your friends to play it, it’s Undertale. With its incredible art direction, lovable characters, and beautiful music, Undertale has never had trouble standing out. With an accessible, unique style, it’s endlessly endearing. But, of course, there’s so much more to it than just what you see on the surface — Undertale can cut deep when it chooses to.

Related:RPGs With The Best Storylines

There’s a reason Undertale became such a phenomenon when it was released, and it hasn’t lost any of its shine. If you somehow have avoided the nitty-gritty of Undertale’s plot and have never played the game before, it’s the perfect way to spend an afternoon. You’ll be glad you did.

1 Papers, Please

Papers Please - Gameplay - deciding on if someone should be allowed an Entry Visa

Papers Please is unlike any game you’ve ever played. It immerses you in one of the most sadly satisfying tasks: being an efficient government bureaucrat. You work on the border of the nation of Arstotzka, which closely mirrors the Eastern Bloc in the 1980s, and all you do is ensure those crossing the border have all their papers in order. Meanwhile, your family’s survival hangs in the balance.

Every day, you are faced with new rules: ID cards, work permits, and entry tickets that soon become entry permits. Yet, there’s a strange pleasure in doing mundane tasks well, even though you may have to compromise your morals to succeed. Dreary colors and stilted movements make you feel trapped in a soul-sucking monotony. Papers, Please's muted aesthetic emphasizes its focus on humanity and empathy - these pixelated people move you, even if you make the "correct" decision as a border bureaucrat. Realism is not just graphics, after all. It's feeling.

NEXT: The Most Graphically Demanding PC Games