A good idea that never quite becomes a good game
Alex & Arty is easy to root for. Instead of defeating enemies, you clean up a planet poisoned by a corporation and watch the grass, water and wildlife come back. We played it on PC, and it gets a 6/10. The core idea, the colors and the soundtrack all land. The problem is almost everything built around them: the game explains very little, promises a calm it does not always deliver and reached Steam with bugs the studio is still fixing.
Barcelona-based RolldBox Games, the team behind Masks of the Void: Origins, developed it, and Brazil's Jataí Games publishes it. It launched September 16, 2026, on PC only and costs $18.99 on Steam in the US. The text is available in English and seven other languages, but there is no voice acting.
How it plays: cleaning instead of fighting
You play as Alex, an explorer who lands on Gladness during what should be a routine mission. There she meets Arty, a creature that can shapeshift into other animals. Together they cross the continent of Arcadia, through regions such as the Wildlands, the Thunder Mountains and the Black Sea, each smothered in toxic slime.
Alex's main tool is the Ionizer, a gun that dissolves that slime. RolldBox calls this reverse combat because you use shooter controls to heal rather than destroy. Once an area is clean, the color returns, the Dilimals (Gladness's native creatures) reappear and blocked paths open up. Watching a gray landscape spring back to life is the best thing the game does.
Building sits on top of the cleansing. You can raise settlements, repair abandoned structures and plant natural elements such as lichen and mycelium to hold back pollution. The studio deliberately left this system open, with no manual telling you how the pieces fit together.
Arty is the highlight, and the game barely explains him
Arty's transformations let you move differently, clear obstacles and reach areas Alex cannot get to on foot. The most striking forms, such as the lizard and the dragon, are not handed out by the main story. You earn them by beating optional bosses. Upgrading Arty also requires didalets, a resource the game mentions a couple of times before leaving you to work out the rest.
Alex's drone hides features too. It can send items back to base and fight alongside you, yet the first feature is mentioned once and the second never appears in the tutorials. RolldBox said as much in the final chapter of its Making Of series, explaining that many mechanics were hidden on purpose to reward curiosity.
That is a fair design goal, but it comes at a cost. Players who do not search every corner will miss Arty's best forms, the better buildings and much of the progression. The game ends up feeling thinner than it really is, because its best parts only show up if someone tells you they exist.
Relaxing on the store page, less so in practice
Players have tagged Alex & Arty as relaxing on Steam, and it includes an exploration mode meant for enjoying the world without worrying about threats. Even so, it has bosses and enemies, and you can die. A Steam curator who covers peaceful adventures wrote on the official forum that they were attacked constantly even in that mode. After dying and respawning they had no idea where they were or what to do next, so they quit.
The same player found the text too small and slow to appear. That matters more than it sounds in a game without voice acting, where the entire story is told through on-screen text. The minimalist interface, which RolldBox designed to keep the screen clean, does little to help you find your way when you are lost.
If you want a gentle stroll with no surprises, know that going in. Alex & Arty is calmer than an action game, but it is not the risk-free experience its exploration mode suggests.
Tech: steep requirements and no cloud saves
The minimum specs call for a GTX 1080, a graphics card that was high-end in 2016. That is a lot to ask of a game with such a simple, colorful art style, and the recommended specs climb to an RTX 3070. We did not benchmark it, so we cannot tell you how it will run on your machine, but those requirements rule out plenty of modest laptops.
Alex & Arty also lacks Steam Cloud saves, the feature that syncs progress between devices. One player on the official forum said they could not pick up on Steam Deck a save started on another machine, and that their controller did not respond on the new game screen. If you plan to play on Valve's handheld, choose one device and stick with it, or browse our best Steam Deck games for something that travels better.
RolldBox has been patching since launch. Fixes so far include Arty's movement in the Thunder Mountains and one of his transformations being able to clear pollution when it should not.
The soundtrack and the charity DLC
The music is the strongest part of the package. Spanish composer Óscar Araujo blends orchestra and electronics with a cinematic touch that makes restored areas feel bigger than they would in silence. The soundtrack is sold separately for $4.99.
The other DLC, Restoring Planet Earth, also costs $4.99. It adds consumable in-game items and a certificate in your name tied to a real environmental action through Dots.eco, such as protecting an area of ocean or land. RolldBox and Jataí pass 100% of their share of its revenue to that organization. It is optional and locks nothing in the base game.
Who this 6 is for
Alex & Arty is worth a look if its message and art style appeal to you, you enjoy figuring out systems by trial and error, and your PC comfortably clears the requirements. At $18.99, watching a biome regain its color to Araujo's score may be enough.
If you want an adventure that guides you, one that is genuinely calm, or one you can move between a PC and a Steam Deck, its limits weigh more heavily. The 6 rewards a brave, good-looking idea and marks the game down for failing to show you what it hides.
The conversation starts here
Sign in with a supporter account to comment. Sign in
Nobody has commented yet. Want to go first?