Everyday Shooter

As I'm Playing Everyday Shooter, winter has finally let go its bitter grip of the British Isles and bright sunshine is streaming through my window.

Apart from the fact that my monitor screen is now too faint to see, leading me to angrily gaffer the curtains together for pitch blackness, this is the perfect chilled conditions for indie developer Jonathan Mak's mellow shoot-'em-up - it's Geometry Wars relaxing with a Pimm's and lemonade.

Everyday Shooter's soundtrack is constructed from funky electric guitar tunes and riffs for a chilled vibe that wouldn't be out of place at Glastonbury -minus the horrifying toilets. Each level is a different song lasting three or four minutes and you move a small white dot around the screen avoiding enemies and blasting them in 360°, peppering the soundscape with further guitar notes and riffs in sync with the music -apparently the game was influenced by the freeware games of Kenta Cho, and Tetsuya Mizuguchi's psychedelic electroshooter Rez.

Guitar Score

Scoring points is achieved by causing chain reaction explosions, triggered in different ways depending on which of the eight levels you're playing, and collecting the dots left behind. For example on Lush Look Killer, you have to quickly obliterate the flashing colourful cubist constructions or glowing yellow balls to defeat the evil eyes. This sounds simple, but a major part of the game's addictive appeal is being thrown into a new level, not knowing what's going on and gradually figuring out the game's internal logic and beating it. After all your lives are extinguished, the points collected can be spent in the Unlock Extras menu for additional lives, visual effects and other goodies, which do keep you coming back.

Everyday Shooter has its faults - there's not as much depth as some old-school shooters, it can feel sluggish and the violently colourful visual cacophany can sometimes mean you lose your place on the screen - but if you love videogames that look like the futuristic cloning of Asteroids and Tron made by The Designers Republic, and want a hazy guitar soundtrack you can bathe your brain in, it's certainly worth the nominal entry fee.