What’s Pixelborn and Should You Play it?

Getting into Disney Lorcana, the new Disney themed trading card game from Ravensburger, during the last several weeks has been a whirlwind.

You wouldn’t expect a game that launched mid-August to have the kind of almost cult following that it does. However, after playing it, we can see why. The game is fun.

However, one very noticeable downside to it is that – unlike other leading TCGs like Magic or Pokemon and Yugioh – there’s no way to actually play this game online. Not that you absolutely need to. There’s a huge community of in-person card players ready to challenge you, beat you, and take home some coveted Disney Lorcana product.

But what do you do if you want to play test your new favorite deck design?

Well, that’s where Pixelborn comes in.

What is Pixelborn?

For all intents and purposes, Pixelborn is the only way to play Disney Lorcana online at the moment. Just like how Pokemon TCG has Pokemon Live, Disney Lorcana has Pixelborn. The only problem is, Pixelborn isn’t actually created by Ravensburger, or Disney, and it isn’t affiliated with them, either.

And that’s pretty hard to believe given how incredibly fantastic this game actually is. Once you get it set up, it runs smoothly with very few glitches or bugs. You would think it’s the real deal put out by Ravensburger. That’s pretty impressive for a game created by a single game developer, Pavel Kolev.

And people have noticed.

Last time I checked, the Pixelborn Discord boasted 40,000 users.

Now, all of that being said, there are a few downsides to Pixelborn that will be a pretty big hurdle for a really large audience to ever grow around it. Here’s why.

Pixelborn is Really, Really Hard to Install by Modern Standards

Trying to get Pixelborn to work on my cutting edge MacBook Air felt a little bit like going back in a time machine to when I was a kid installing complicated, multi-disc CD-ROM games I bought at Best Buy onto my Dell desktop computer.

Only, to be honest, it was even more complicated than that, and I feel like I only got lucky in getting the game to work. I downloaded the Zip file, found the Mac operating system, and then dug through a few folders to find the exec file. I don’t even really understand what I just said but when I ran it in something called a Mac Terminal, it worked.

And it was like magic once it did.

A World of Magic Devoid of Disney Images Awaits

Once installed, a world of magic and sorcery carefully bereft of any Disney or Ravensburger logos or artwork greeted me.

The game actually works like modern card gaming apps. It has the rules and the mechanics built into the game, which means you don’t have to do anything manually. Playing Pixelborn is incredibly intuitive, and even boasts wonderful effects, colorful graphics and settings, and charming music.

If you can figure out how to install it (a major hurdle to most casual fans used to downloading apps from the app store and being done with it), anyone who knows how to play Lorcana won’t have any issue playing the game at all.

There are No Images Included in the Game

As part of the game’s attempt to not rub Disney or Ravensburger the wrong way, they aren’t actually including anything Disney in their game.

While Pixelborn is built around the rules of Lorcana, not even the card faces themselves are included. That might sound super weird, and it is. You have to actually go and import the images from a link that you have to find online with images and text for your language.

If installing Pixelborn is tough, wait until you get to this part of the journey.

It took me several tries before the game successfully imported the images. I had to keep shutting the game off and restarting it. But once you do get it to import your card images, you shouldn’t have to do it again for a while (until a new set comes out).

Deck Building in Pixelborn Isn’t Fun

While the game interface itself is scary good (it really feels like the beta version of a modern gaming app that was left feeling intentionally retro), deck building in it kind of sucks. I didn’t understand right away how to build my deck, and it’s not very intuitive.

You’re much better off using dreamborn.ink to build your decks, and then export them into Pixelborn (this can be done via a handy link that dreamborn.ink gives you).

Minor edits aren’t an issue within Pixelborn itself, but leave the real deck building to dreamborn.ink.

Playing Pixelborn Feels Like Getting Let in On a Well Kept Secret

I can see why Pixelborn is such a hit. Once you get over the hurdle of installing it, it’s a captivating experience, and you really get the feeling you are in on a well kept secret – the ground floor of something that right now may be fledgling, but will one day be something great.

I really hope Ravensburger buys this thing, Pavel gets to retire to an island somewhere, and the rest of us get to enjoy playing Disney Lorcana whenever we want.

Oh, and that they fix the install process. Nobody’s got time for that rigmarol anymore.