Indie game studio · Rotterdam · est. 2019

We forge small games with big hearts.

PixelForge is a seven-person studio making hand-crafted pixel games for PC and consoles. Three launches, 1.4 million players and one very good office cat.

Browse our games
Players1.4M
Steam rating94%
Crunch hours0
Dark arcade room lit by glowing cabinet screens
SteamNintendo SwitchPlayStation 5Xbox SeriesSteam Deckitch.io
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The cartridge shelf

Hover a cartridge, hit play and the trailer boots up on our CRT. No ads, no autoplay sound.

All 6 games
Lanternfall key artOut now
Cozy adventurePC · Switch · PS5

Lanternfall

Light the lanterns of a drowned city with a moth named Pim. A hand-drawn pixel adventure about grief, glowworms and going home.

$19.99Game page >
Deep Shift key artEarly access
Roguelite minerPC · Steam Deck

Deep Shift

Dig, die, upgrade the drill, dig deeper. Every run reshapes a 4,000-metre mine full of very territorial worms.

$14.99Game page >
Neon Courier key artOut now
Arcade racerPC · Switch · Xbox

Neon Courier

Deliver noodles across a synthwave megacity at 300 km/h. Drift for combo multipliers; never let the soup go cold.

$12.99Game page >
The forge

Small team. Long polish.

We ship one game a year at most. Every sprite, every sound and every line of dialogue is made in-house by the same seven people who answer your bug reports.

  • Four-day work week since 2021
  • Every game playable on Steam Deck day one
  • Full colour-blind and one-handed control modes
  • Source-available modding tools on GitHub
Meet the studio
The PixelForge team planning around a shared table
Game code on a dark monitor
Retro consoles and handhelds on a studio desk
Devlog

Notes from the forge floor

Fortnightly posts on art, code and audio. Honest numbers included.

Read the devlog
How we fit a whole city into 64 colours
Art6 min read

How we fit a whole city into 64 colours

Behind Lanternfall’s palette: the limits we set, the rules we broke and the one shade of teal that took three weeks.

Devlog #41: The worm AI finally fights back
Code6 min read

Devlog #41: The worm AI finally fights back

Deep Shift’s tunnel worms now flank, retreat and hold grudges. Here is the 200-line state machine behind them.

Writing chiptune on a tape loop
Audio6 min read

Writing chiptune on a tape loop

Teo walks through the cassette-to-tracker workflow behind the Neon Courier soundtrack.

Player reviews

High scores

10/10
“Lanternfall made me cry on a train. Twice. The pixel art is unreal.”
— Steam review, 212 hrs played
9/10
“Deep Shift is the most one-more-run game I’ve played this year. Those worms are personal.”
— Pixel Press Weekly
9/10
“Gearheart GP is the couch game our family fights over every Friday night.”
— Switch eShop review
Player 2 has entered

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Trailer

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