- Artwork preview fix - 15 August 2026
If you created any of your own artworks, looking at their fullscreen preview (clicking on the canvas while on the clipboard) made the game freeze. This small patch makes it work again. Sorry about that!
- Patch for too many chess pieces - 20 July 2026
Some of you were able to buy 9 pawns in Chess Academy. This patch will fix your save file and prevent any others from being too speedy in the chess shop. No more breaking the chess law!
- Chess art project - 13 July 2026
An art project in which you draw small, 2D chess pieces.Playtest your art on the Pixeltosh and learn the rules of chess.A chess magazine with 90 references to get inspired by.4 chessboard themes and a dark interface mode to match your art style.Play against the computer, a friend, or watch Pixeltosh play itself in 5 difficulty levels.Following Pixel Art Academy's typical progression (tutorial → challenge → project), we're rounding up the exploration of simplification and pixel art size with a project where you draw sprites for a chess video game.After you've drawn the icons in the readability challenge, you get access to Chess Academy, a Pixeltosh program where you design pieces for the game's 2D view. (3D style will be available in the future after I add the form element of art.)In Chess Academy, you slowly unlock pieces as you buy them in the game shop.For each piece, you get to draw…
- Steam Cloud and more - 15 May 2026
Steam Cloud available for existing and new saves.Universal macOS build with native Apple Silicon support.SteamOS/Linux build enabled, see below.Storage and performance optimizations.I finally completed the basic Steam integration into the game, the first bonus of which is support for Steam Cloud. After you load your save game, you can enable Steam Cloud in the popup dialog.If you don't enable it, you can do it later through the load menu (click edit and select your save game).You can also disable Steam Cloud here later, if you want your save game to be available just locally on that computer. The option to use Steam Cloud now appears when you're starting a new game as well.And to easily see which save game you're currently on, you can see the floppy disk in the bottom-right corner of the pause menu.The save files on your hard drive now get compressed on load (including backups, which ar…
- Readability analysis hotfix - 21 April 2026
There was a bug where the readability analysis didn't give you a checkmark if you used undo to get back to the state of the drawing before you opened the analysis paper. I've changed the logic now a bit so that the analysis always computes in the background and it only shows after you first open the paper (so it doesn't distract you when you're initially drawing).
- Readability challenge - 21 April 2026
Pixel art readability challenge with 94 icons to draw in 8×8, 16×16, and 32×32 sizes.Two new cassette tapes in synthwave and lo-fi genres.Archive folder for inactive tutorials.Let me know if you find the readability analysis discouraging.Continuing from where we left off with the Pixel art size tutorial, this update brings the new Pixel art readability challenge. It's similar to the Draw Quickly challenge in that you draw one of the 94 subjects Pixeltosh can recognize, but this time on a small pixel grid.It uses the same readability analysis introduced in the last lesson of the Pixel art size tutorial, where Pixeltosh tells how easy it was for it to see the subject.Note that you still get a checkmark, even if the recognition didn't work. The Pixeltosh uses a small neural network that is not specialized at reading pixel art and especially has trouble with the smallest 8×8 size where a lo…
- Perceived resolution lesson hotfix - 26 February 2026
In case you got stuck on the Perceived resolution lesson, it wouldn't let you complete if you accidentally painted some pixels behind the preview area on the phone or laptop screens. This fix now lets you complete the lesson even if something extra is painted there.
- Pixel art size - 23 February 2026
Pixel art size tutorial.Study Plan drawing performance improvement.Easter egg: Jungle PICO-8 cartridge.After you've acquired the simplification and smooth curves interests, you will now unlock a new goal about pixel art size.Every pixel art image depends on the size of the canvas within which it is created. The new tutorial on the topic goes over the basic principles (size of the pixels and smallest representable details) and introduces a new readability analysis tool.I'm reusing the image recognition capabilities from the Quick Draw program from the Simplification goal, so don't expect too much, but it's good enough to not just let you proceed without any resemblance of what you need to draw.I'll try to add some more features into this system with the next update, where you will have the challenge of drawing any of the ~100 possible subjects as an icon.Here's the latest devlog going ov…
- To-do list fix and minor Study Plan improvements - 24 January 2026
There was a bug in the latest update where the to-do tasks would stop writing out on a new playthrough, so I fixed it.I also added a list of active goals at the bottom-left of the Study Plan to show which goals are currently being displayed in the Drawing app. When you click on the name of a goal, you also get a window explaining that you can check/uncheck the completed status of a goal to hide/reactivate it.Additionally, a list of gained interests shows which requirements you already completed so far.
- Study Plan - 5 January 2026
Study Plan app shows the big picture of available goals and tasks.Add goals to get new tasks.Mark goals complete to hide them from the Drawing app.Before I could add more tutorials, I had to solve the issue of the Drawing app getting cluttered as you complete more and more tasks.I also wanted you to have a better overview of your learning journey (than the Progress tracker in the main menu).Both of these could be solved with a study plan where you could add your goals and mark them complete when you're done. It starts small, as soon as you complete the Basics tutorial.Over time you will add more goals and gain the ability to plan your journey further ahead. The map will then reveal itself as you complete the tasks.It's a sort of an overworld view that shows the big picture of what you can do in the game. It also makes it easier to see which things you can solve in parallel and where tho…
- Draw Quickly challenge - 21 November 2025
Draw Quickly minigame with 94 subjects to draw.Symbolic drawing mode where the computer guesses what you're drawing.Realistic drawing mode where you apply simplification with a reference.I like to follow the tutorial→challenge→project progression where learning new theory continues to practice and then a creative project where you apply the new knowledge freeform.The Simplification tutorial is no different and so in between learning abstraction (tutorial) and drawing your own icons (project, coming in the future), I wanted to squeeze in a fun challenge called Draw Quickly.To keep things black and white, I put it on the Pixeltosh. I can easily imagine how I'd be playing wtih an educational software like this in the 80s.Symbolic drawing mode is very much like Pictionary, where the computer is trying to guess which of the 10 things you're currently drawing.Behind the scenes, there's a tiny…
- Pixel art curves hotfix - 26 September 2025
The paths stopped showing in some of the pixel art curves lessons due to upgraded paths. Had to change one line of code and now it works again. Yay!
- Simplification - 25 September 2025
Simplification tutorial.3D references that can be manipulated.This update brings a new tutorial about simplifying shapes from realistic to highly stylized.4 techniques are presented, which can be used in various degrees and combinations. The silhouette lesson shows that if you choose a good angle you don't need any details for an object to be recognizable.I had to implement a new type of 3D reference that you can manipulate to solve the lesson. Besides being able to rotate the 3D model, you can also add or remove details—one of the most used approaches in simplification.You can change the objects' proportions to make lines and shapes more readable.And you can morph the shapes themselves towards their basic versions (circles, squares, horizontal/vertical/45 degree lines).Each stylization lesson comes with 3 references to choose from and there's a final lesson where you study various char…
- 10 years of Pixel Art Academy + Back to School Games Celebration - 28 August 2025
10-year anniversary video going over a decade of Pixel Art Academy development.Play other educational games on Back to School Games Celebration.Most of you probably don't know the history behind Pixel Art Academy: Learn Mode. It started as an idea to give players an experience of going to art school, but you'd also learn a real drawing skill along the way. The project proved to be a bigger dream than I imagined, so 7 years into development I decided to release the competed lessons as a standalone version, now known as Learn Mode. In my 10-year anniversary video I go over this project's beginning on Kickstarter, a bit chaotic development of the adventure parts, and the eventual switch to a more focused, polished experience.I hope you will enjoy learning a bit more about the motivation behind the project:I didn't do a sale to celebrate this big milestone exactly on the anniversary as I kn…
- File system and invasion project fix - 15 August 2025
A player reported they were getting an EPERM error on Windows during the autosave, so I fixed my file system handling to avoid this. I also noticed while debugging this that the Invasion project unlocked too soon (when you finished the Shape tutorial). I fixed it so it correctly unlocks after the Shape language tutorial.
- Shoot 'em up project - 13 August 2025
Invasion project (a shmup game for PICO-8) unlocks after you complete Shape language.Customize the Invasion design document on the Pixeltosh.Chronoscope, a magazine with science fiction artworks for inspiration and reference.A new dynamic soundtrack song plays in Pixel art fundamentals and Invasion project.After a bunch of theory around designing shapes, it's time to put things into practice by drawing sprites for a simple, single-screen shoot em' up.It runs on PICO-8, so it's not a long project like the Pinball game, but it's not as simple as the Snake game either. The extra bit of functionality is that you have the chance to customize the design document for the game.You can change every underlined word in the document …… and adjust plenty of numeric properties.The main thing is of course still to draw the sprites.And you have a new magazine/book available if you choose to design your…
- Shape language - 19 June 2025
Shape language tutorial. Filled rectangle/ellipse tool by clicking again on the ruler.Redesigned look of picking up references.You can now unlock the first tutorial in the Design fundamentals course (as soon as you complete the Elements of art: shape). In Shape language, you'll learn from 12 different games, how they use circles, squares, and triangles as the building blocks for their characters.To aid you with drawing all the shapes, you can now click again on the rectangle or ellipse tool to get the filled variant.I've also improved the display of references with better drop shadows, which should make exploring all the game cartridges more pleasant.As always, I go behind the scenes in my devlog.I hope you will enjoy this learning-from-examples approach. Soon you should be able to put this knowledge into practice as well.See you then! —Retro
- Symbols color help hotfix - 1 June 2025
It was discovered that the color help option that draws symbols instead of dots didn't work properly on Windows and Linux (it was misaligned and too big, which made it also impossible to see which pixels to delete). This hotfix attempts to resolve this issue.
- Line art challenge hotfix - 26 May 2025
Just a bug fix for the Maniac Mansion reference in the Pixel art line art challenge. One of the shapes wasn't completely black and since the game now supports shapes of different colors, it wouldn't let you complete it.
- Element of art: shape - 22 May 2025
Elements of art tutorial on shapes. Ruler tool for drawing lines, rectangles, and ellipses. A detailed plan for the rest of Learn Mode. I'm very excited to be working back on new tutorials. Starting off with the next element of art, you will learn how to start a drawing with basic shapes and transform them with details and organic forms. If you look closely, you will notice a new ruler tool that will speed up drawing of rectangles and ellipses (there will be a LOT of them). The latest YouTube devlog goes behind the scenes of all the lessons, as well as offers a look at the plan for the rest of the content in Learn Mode. Given how many sprints it will take to get all the elements of art out, I will now prioritize developing new content over quality-of-life updates, unless of course half of the game breaks or any essential feature requests come up. Let me know in the forums. Thanks for gi…
