I was ready to sing the praises of PixelTap for being a Telegram-based tap-to-earn game that was trying to do something different. But amid recent changes, one new feature in the Pixelverse game has killed any chance of me continuing to play.

Compared to other prominent tap-to-earn games, PixelTap is more involved than just blindly tapping the screen, as you are thrown into battles against other players and have to tap in specific areas of the screen to take them down.

When you get matched against a similar-level opponent that isn’t using some kind of auto-clicker to gain an advantage, the fights are surprisingly fun and a close match can be very tense indeed. That’s especially true if it comes down to the last few frantic moments when your fingers start to feel tired.

The superkick system, which sees you pick one corner of the screen to attack and one to defend, can derail a close fight with super-powered damage, but this tends to be somewhat of a rarity—so close fights are more common than you might think when first starting out.

Screenshots from PixelTap. Image: Decrypt

Upgrading your pets isn’t a particularly satisfying experience, as it’s really just a process of tapping buttons on the menu, but taking them into battle and crushing others is—and it will slowly start to make you care a little about the pets in your stable.

As far as tap-to-earn games go, this is probably the closest to an actual game that I’ve played. With some UI and visual improvements to the battle system, PixelTap could become really quite fun to play for a while.

But there are things that hold it back, with an unbalanced economy being one of them. Simply solving the daily combo every day will net you more coins than hours of battles—like 10 million or more once you’ve been playing for a while. That makes it essentially pointless to play the lower-reward battles, if all you really care about is getting a bigger balance.

Then there’s the passive income, which you can claim in one batch by tapping a button, or get it gradually by tapping the screen. Why you would do the latter, I don’t understand, as you can just log in once every few hours to click a button and maximize your earnings.

Screenshots from PixelTap. Image: Decrypt

But these confusing choices are nothing compared to the recently implemented level system. With fans calling for some kind of progression that wasn’t tied to a pet, Pixelverse added account levels earlier this month, giving you tasks to complete that will increase your level and thus your earning potential.

Early tasks like winning a set amount of battles or earning a certain amount of coins were reasonable enough. But to progress past level three, you have to invite one friend to the game and follow the game’s Twitter (aka X) account—two things I’m not really prepared to do in order to level up.

And higher levels only ask for more friend referrals, echoing one of the most frustrating parts of other Telegram games like Hamster Kombat. PixelTap prioritizes growth over player experience, but that’s the name of the game with these Telegram games—it’s all about engagement and scale.

Having optional bonuses for these actions is fine, because I can ignore them and not annoy my friends and fill my social feeds with things like this. But as soon as you lock progression behind those actions, that’s a signal for me to stop playing.

I’m disappointed by the move, as PixelTap was perhaps the most satisfying of all the tap-to-earn games I’ve played so far. But as I’m not willing to annoy my friends with such requests, I’m stuck and unable to progress—so I doubt I’ll ever go back, even if there are crypto rewards up for grabs.

Edited by Andrew Hayward