PixelKin — A Retro Creature-Collecting Game, Free in Any Browser
PixelKin is a handheld-style role-playing game in which you catch, raise and battle over 150 original creatures across fourteen regions, then relight a sky gone dark one constellation at a time. Scorchsoft designed and built all of it, from the game engine and the world to the music and the tools that test it. It runs in the browser on desktop and mobile, with nothing to install.
A complete game, built end to end
PixelKin is a full role-playing game, not a demo: a world to explore, a roster of original creatures, a story with an ending, and two soundtracks. It is free to play at pixelk.in.
150+
original creatures, each with its own sprites, moves and cry
14
regions, from harbour towns to caves, glaciers and the spire at the world's centre
2
soundtracks: classic chiptune and a remastered score, switchable in Settings
0
installs: it runs in the browser on desktop and phone, with touch controls
Inside PixelKin
Games are unforgiving software. A business app can hide a slow screen behind a spinner; a game has to answer a keypress at once, save without losing progress and play as well on a phone as on a desktop. Here is what that game is.
The world
A World Built for Exploring
Fourteen regions, one connected map
Harbour towns, coast roads, fens, mines, glaciers and the spire at the centre of the world, joined by roads, caves and ferries. The in-game map is drawn from the real layout of the levels, so it never lies about where you are.
New powers open new paths
Traversal powers, the game's Lantern Gifts, let you swim, climb and cross ground you could only look at an hour before, so earlier regions keep opening up as you go.
The battles
Turn-Based Battles Across Ten Types
Readable, then deep
Ten elemental types with clear strengths and weaknesses. A move's power, accuracy and type are a button press away, and the game only shows whether a move will be super effective once you have caught that creature and studied it.
Balanced by simulation, not by guesswork
Every creature's stats are costed against a shared budget, and a Monte Carlo simulator fights every type against every other. Every type lands between 46.7% and 53.3% win rate.
The collecting
Catch, Raise and Kindle
Over 150 original creatures
The game calls them kin. Every one is an original design with its own battle, menu and map sprites and its own cry, recorded in an in-game index as you meet and catch them.
Kindling, the game's word for evolving
Raise a kin and it kindles into a new form in a short staged ceremony, with its own music. A player can stop it, and it will ask again later.
The platform
Built for Phones as Well as Desktops
Touch controls that feel like a handheld
On a phone the game sits in a handheld-style frame with an on-screen d-pad and buttons, in landscape or portrait. It can be added to the home screen to play full screen.
Saves you can keep
Progress saves in the browser, and any save can be exported to a file and loaded on another device.
How We Approached the Game Development
The engineering behind PixelKin, and the production line behind a game of this size.
The stack
A Web Stack That Ports to Mobile
TypeScript, Vite and Phaser 3
The game renders at a fixed 240×160 and scales up with crisp pixels on any screen. Device-specific code (storage, input, audio) sits behind one platform layer, so the same build can be wrapped for the app stores without rewriting the game.
Content as data
Creatures, moves, maps, shops, quests and cutscenes are all data files checked by validators. Adding a creature or a town is a data change, not new code.
The safety net
Automated Play-Testing of the Whole Game
The build plays the game
On every change, the build replays the whole game tile by tile, from a new save to the ending, and fails if any region, quest or reward becomes unreachable. Further checks catch maps you could get stuck in, broken doorways and missing art.
Built with AI coding agents, under our engineers' direction
PixelKin was built by Scorchsoft engineers working with AI coding agents. The automated test suite above is what makes that pace safe: nothing ships unless the game can still be finished.
The production line
Original Art and Music, at Scale
A binding art guide and a sprite pipeline
Terrain tiles are drawn in code; creature and character sprites come from an AI-assisted pipeline that snaps every image to the exact canvas, anchor and palette in the game's art guide.
Two soundtracks from the same themes
The chiptune score is composed as MIDI and rendered with the game's own chip synthesiser. The remastered score is produced from the same themes, and a setting switches between them.
Inside the Game
Real screens from the game as it runs in the browser: no mock-ups.
Cinderhead, a mining town on the map
A kin kindles into its next form
A Lampwarden challenges you in her hall
What PixelKin Shows About How We Work
PixelKin is a portfolio piece. These are the parts of it that carry straight over into client work.
Real-time performance on the web
Smooth movement and instant controls in the browser, on desktop and phone, from one codebase.
Content systems people can extend safely
Hundreds of creatures, maps and quests held as validated data, so content grows without new code.
Testing that covers the whole journey
Automated checks that play the user journey end to end, not just the individual parts.
Creative production as a repeatable pipeline
Art, music and writing produced to a guide, checked automatically and rebuilt on demand.
What We Built It With
A browser game with no server to run, served as a static site, with its art and music produced by AI-assisted pipelines under a written guide.
- TypeScript and the Phaser 3 game framework
- Vite, deployed to Cloudflare
- Python tooling for maps, balance and asset pipelines
- Playwright for automated play-testing and gameplay capture
- ElevenLabs for the remastered music
- Google and OpenAI image models in the sprite pipeline
- AI coding agents, directed and reviewed by Scorchsoft engineers
Got an idea for a game or interactive experience?
The skills behind PixelKin apply to gamified training, interactive product demos and branded games. Tell us about your idea and we'll come back with a ballpark quote.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. It is free to play at pixelk.in, with no account and no install.
Yes. It runs in mobile browsers with on-screen controls, and can be added to the home screen to play full screen.
Yes. The same skills apply to gamified training, interactive product demos and branded games. Tell us about your idea and we'll come back with a ballpark quote.
TypeScript and the Phaser 3 game framework, built with Vite and served as a static site from Cloudflare. The art and music pipelines use AI models under a written style guide, and the code was built by our engineers working with AI coding agents.
More of our work
Read more case studies in our portfolio, see our capabilities, or contact Scorchsoft about building a game or interactive app of your own.
What Our Clients Say
Scorchsoft helped us take our idea for an app and make it a reality. Everything from the planning meeting to decide what we really needed to the project management and execution was great. It was delivered on time - early in fact - and on budget. Highly recommend.
Rebecca PalserDragonfly IntelligenceScorchsoft is a brilliant company with fantastic knowledge of the mobile app industry. From the project management to the development team, they have been the perfect candidate for our project, and we can't thank them enough!
Lance ChorltonGapped OnlineWe're really pleased with the work Scorchsoft has done in developing our web portal! They have been accurate with timelines and budget, delivering a solid product that allows us to monitor and manage patients remotely while they use our novel medical device at-home. The "plan - design - build" approach has worked well and saved us time in the long-run by catching requirements and issues early.
Daniel GreenSensTrainI'm really pleased with how my app came out, it was exactly what I was looking for. The team at Scorchsoft are great at what they do and made the whole process as simple and easy as possible. Being someone who is not very tech savvy the set up and back end operations were done in a great easy to use manner even for myself which makes using my app stress free. Thanks to all the team!
Ruben CarrollMosaic MasterpiecesThe new Flourish Education website has already removed a lot of manual processes, freeing up both schools, candidates and internal employees time. We are delighted with the look and feel which is clean, professional and more engaging. We are also pleased with the decision to have an HD video background on the homepage, and building immediate trust with our clients by giving them a taste of what it looks like in the Flourish Education offices.
James HancocksMarketing Manager, Flourish Education I can't believe how quickly we started to see results with this project. Scorchsoft provided us with graphic-designed mockups of how the app would look once built, and we were able to sell the product for use by our first customer before the product was finished. Since launching in March, we have secured a major television network as a client who now uses Image Approvals to manage the talent approval process for their productions.
Aimee SpinksMD, ImageApprovals.com
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Tell us where you're headed and we'll come back with our thoughts, a realistic plan and a rough cost estimate. Scorchsoft is a UK-based team of app, portal and AI developers, working in-house from Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter.