I want to preface this by saying that the idea behind this game is incredible and the execution is very good given that it's still early access. If you want to learn pixel art and you're considering buying this game, buy it. You'll definitely learn something and have a lot of fun while you're at it.

That said, I also have some gripes and I want to challenge the developer a bit in hopes that the game will be better for it, because I believe a lot in what it's trying to achieve.

The pixel art editor is very good! It's roughly consistent with Aseprite hotkeys which is nice and the built-in analysis tools are very useful for a beginner. Using this editor was a joy. I wish I could use it more.. This is by far my number one complaint about the game. There were plenty of cool lessons where I'd learn a new concept and I'd go "omg that's so smart! I want to go make my own piece now to practice!" but there is no way to enter any kind of free draw mode. Yeah, I can close out of the game, open Aseprite, and get used to the different environment but that flow feels bad and I lose out on the cool analysis tools. I could also just take a different lesson and edit it a bit but then I can't change the palette at all and I'll also get constant popups like "You used the wrong color!" (huge "green is not a creative color" vibes). I bought this game because I want to be creative. Please give me the chance to be creative.

I used a drawing tablet for this game and the experience was pretty rough sometimes. It's impossible to click anything on the macintosh emulator with it because it expects your cursor to stay totally still and double click. The line drawing tool in the pixel art editor is challenging to get used to with a pen, but it is possible at least. Overall, it's definitely achievable to play the whole game with a tablet with the exception of the pinball project, but I wouldn't recommend it. The game was clearly made with a mouse in mind (as of January 2025).

Some quick-fire small complaints:
- There's no marquee tool in the pixel art editor. This would've been really nice while making the pinball playfield.
- The lessons often got really tedious, due in part to not knowing how many I had left before the next fun project because they only appear once you do the previous lesson
- The lessons use up a lot of screen real estate with text that I wish I could push out of the way so I could use my screen for drawing
- There's a maximum zoom level which is pretty annoying when I want to zoom way in
- The keyboard shortcuts aren't 100% compatible with Aseprite which is pretty annoying when I want to e.g. press z to zoom in and afaik there's no way to set custom shortcuts
- Page turning by clicking on the edges was unintuitive for me, my first thought was to click and drag, which just closed the magazine
- Pressing the back button while in the macintosh emulator kicks you all the way out to the main app selection screen instead of back to the macintosh folder view
- This is a nitpick but I wish the fanart section wasn't all just posters from the 80s. I was born after 2000 and I'm getting tired of all this cultural nostalgia for a time I never experienced. I found it hard to connect with the game for that reason.
- Lots of times I wanted to make small adjustments to what I was drawing, especially in the fanart assignments where the task is more open ended, but if you move the lines too much you fail the lesson. I found that discouraged creativity for me.
- What's the key to move the paddles in pinball? I never found it

Alright, now the big one that I think will be controversial: the pinball project is much too big. This game is like 50% pinball simulator right now (hyperbole, but I bet I could guess how much time the developer spent on pinball vs the rest of the game combined). Above, I complained that the pixel art editor has no marquee tool and therefore also has no flip or rotate tool. You know what has all three? The pinball editor. I wanted to go into this open minded and tried to enjoy it, thinking "oh it's just like the snake project, it'll be over soon and we'll move on to learning colors" but it just kept going. After I finished the playfield by hand drawing bumpers and then learned that I would next have to draw and place bumpers separately, I decided to just skip through the rest of the tasks and then go back and redesign everything once I knew what all I would be adding. After all, I shouldn't design the playfield to use multiple plungers if we're going to be making gates and paddles later. But it just. kept. going. I now know far more about the history of pinball than I ever wanted to learn. The pinball game has so many tools and variables for changing things meanwhile I can't even pick my own color in the pixel art editor. I really wish the pinball project showed you all of the things you'll be drawing for it upfront so you can plan your design better from the start and I wish it didn't force you to do so many small tasks, constantly going in and out of the macintosh emulator (which is quite tedious when you have to switch from tablet to mouse every time you need to double click) and let the player choose how much they want to engage with the more advanced mechanics, like changing variables for parts and the like. Personally, I thought the broad idea for the project was a fun exercise in game design and I like how it showcased that even 1-bit pixel art can be worthwhile. It was a great choice for a project to test the player before learning about more colors, but I just am not that interested in pinball, man. I wanna learn the next thing and make my own stuff, not learn more about a game that was dead before I was even born.

To end it off, I want to say once again that I love this game and I learned a lot and I don't regret playing it in the slightest. I feel so much more prepared to practice my own art and move on to more advanced tools and resources. But that just make the little annoyances hurt more, because I want this game to live up to what it promises, because I want pixel art to be fun and accessible and I've yet to see anything that comes as close to making that happen as Pixel Art Academy.

A quick-fire list of things I appreciated to balance it out:
- the whole music system is a really nice touch. I'm sure it took a ton of work but it made the experience so much better
- the little character's eyes follow your mouse
- the background ambient noise was cool. Whose cough was that?? lol
- Showcasing others' art and letting you see how they used different techniques was really cool. I imagine it's hellish to try to do insert art analysis because of copyright, so being able to look trace some real art with permission was awesome
- the line and curve analysis tools are really nontrivial. I was trying to think about how I could write an Aseprite plugin to do the same thing and my conclusion was "I could probably make something kinda sorta like that if I really tried.... but it would take a damn long time and turn out worse" and they're so helpful! A huge value add for this game
- For as much as I complained about discouraging creativity at some points, the game constantly chimes in with "If you find this rule too restrictive, just ignore it. Look at this awesome piece by someone who broke it on purpose!" I love that spirit.
- Working on the fanart pieces was a fantastic way to ease the player into learning to do things a little more autonomously while also not throwing them too far into the deep end. Very well done.
- The whole UI and setting was very immersive and incredibly fun. I love creative UI design like that and it made the whole experience much more charming than some minimal web app you might otherwise see.

Retro, if you read this, I hope I wasn't too harsh on you. Please, keep up the good work, just maybe reign in the scope a little bit and focus on the core product. Thanks.