Despite playing this game on PC, the Pixeljunk brand is one I can’t help but mentally associate with PlayStation, largely due to the acclaim it received on the PSN platform all the way back in 2009. I feel the ‘console wars’ of the PS3/360 era were the most prevalent since the SNES/Megadrive days, and I expect this played no small part in an indie game getting heralded as much as this was.
It took a year and half to appear on PC in any form and, evidently, another decade after that for me to get around to playing it.
It’s a bit strange to say that a game ‘isn’t what I was expecting’ when all I’ve had to go on is a name.
Pixeljunk Shooter is one of those ‘picked it up in a bundle’ games, but, as I've said before, I don’t keep games I get in bundles unless there’s something about them that appeals to me. In this case that’s very likely to have been the words ‘Pixel’ and ‘Shooter’ in the title.
This could have left me hoist by my own ‘expectation is the mother of disappointment’ shaped petard, as the game not only doesn’t feature any pixels, but it’s also not really a shooter.
One of the best things about playing games so long after they are initially released is the complete absence of hype. This is a game that was regularly listed among the best exclusive titles for the PS3, the retro-revival at the time can only have magnified this, but I still can’t help but imagine many people were a bit bemused to check this game out and find something that, at first glance, looks like a flash game.
I emphasise ‘at first glance’ because any more than a cursory look will reveal a game with a distinctive style and beautifully rendered fluid dynamics far beyond their initially simplistic colours and shapes. The music is fantastic too, and sets the tone of the game perfectly.
‘Shooter’ has you control a small craft ‘twin-stick’ style as you descend into a planet to rescue scientists who have become trapped. The controls are immediately brilliant, with a little more inertia than you usually find in this type of game, making it a joy to fly - the tiny depiction of thrusters firing as you jet around the caves is a great touch.
The craft has two main abilities: shoot; standard fire or charge for homing missiles, and grapple, and releasing a cable with which to collect diamonds, power-ups, and rescue the aforementioned scientists.
What begins as a simple shoot and collect game quickly evolves into an environmental physics puzzler. The core mechanic of the game, rather than being a ‘shooter’, is concerned with manipulating elemental artefacts within the caves to gain access to the stranded scientists.
This could be melting ice with lava, combining water and lava to make rock, using fire to burn off gasses, and many other combinations. There are plants and creatures that are similarly elementally inclined and can also be used to affect the world in helpful ways.
Your craft, too, is affected by the elements, with heat a particular issue that needs to be managed as you navigate close to lava and enemies of that elemental alignment.
Alongside the increasingly complex puzzles on offer, the challenge is bolstered by fiendish placement of the imperilled scientists not just in the environment, but also very near to deadly hazards or in the firing line to hostile enemies.
The approach, therefore, has to be fairly cautious, but - particularly in later levels - too much caution will also bring you to a sticky end.
It’s in maintaining this balance that Pixeljunk Shooter excels. Each stage is played on a knife edge of ‘just enough’, and it achieves this without ever getting tedious or frustrating.
The game is also great and unveiling its complexities gradually, so they never feel complex or overwhelming. This may be a game that’s played with 2 sticks and 2 buttons, but there’s a fair bit going on. These gameplay details are revealed over several levels and always fully embedded before the next mechanic is introduced.
It may be contrary to the goal of working through a backlog but I’m going to have to look into the other Pixeljunk games after playing this. I have ‘Monsters’, probably from the same bundle, and I’ll be looking forward to Selectron™ picking that in the future (I may even have to manipulate it to do so) but if all the Pixeljunk games are all built with the mantra of ‘easy to play - hard to master’ so clearly at their core then I’m sure I will find more to love in the back-catalogue.
It took a year and half to appear on PC in any form and, evidently, another decade after that for me to get around to playing it.
It’s a bit strange to say that a game ‘isn’t what I was expecting’ when all I’ve had to go on is a name.
Pixeljunk Shooter is one of those ‘picked it up in a bundle’ games, but, as I've said before, I don’t keep games I get in bundles unless there’s something about them that appeals to me. In this case that’s very likely to have been the words ‘Pixel’ and ‘Shooter’ in the title.
This could have left me hoist by my own ‘expectation is the mother of disappointment’ shaped petard, as the game not only doesn’t feature any pixels, but it’s also not really a shooter.
One of the best things about playing games so long after they are initially released is the complete absence of hype. This is a game that was regularly listed among the best exclusive titles for the PS3, the retro-revival at the time can only have magnified this, but I still can’t help but imagine many people were a bit bemused to check this game out and find something that, at first glance, looks like a flash game.
I emphasise ‘at first glance’ because any more than a cursory look will reveal a game with a distinctive style and beautifully rendered fluid dynamics far beyond their initially simplistic colours and shapes. The music is fantastic too, and sets the tone of the game perfectly.
‘Shooter’ has you control a small craft ‘twin-stick’ style as you descend into a planet to rescue scientists who have become trapped. The controls are immediately brilliant, with a little more inertia than you usually find in this type of game, making it a joy to fly - the tiny depiction of thrusters firing as you jet around the caves is a great touch.
The craft has two main abilities: shoot; standard fire or charge for homing missiles, and grapple, and releasing a cable with which to collect diamonds, power-ups, and rescue the aforementioned scientists.
What begins as a simple shoot and collect game quickly evolves into an environmental physics puzzler. The core mechanic of the game, rather than being a ‘shooter’, is concerned with manipulating elemental artefacts within the caves to gain access to the stranded scientists.
This could be melting ice with lava, combining water and lava to make rock, using fire to burn off gasses, and many other combinations. There are plants and creatures that are similarly elementally inclined and can also be used to affect the world in helpful ways.
Your craft, too, is affected by the elements, with heat a particular issue that needs to be managed as you navigate close to lava and enemies of that elemental alignment.
Alongside the increasingly complex puzzles on offer, the challenge is bolstered by fiendish placement of the imperilled scientists not just in the environment, but also very near to deadly hazards or in the firing line to hostile enemies.
The approach, therefore, has to be fairly cautious, but - particularly in later levels - too much caution will also bring you to a sticky end.
It’s in maintaining this balance that Pixeljunk Shooter excels. Each stage is played on a knife edge of ‘just enough’, and it achieves this without ever getting tedious or frustrating.
The game is also great and unveiling its complexities gradually, so they never feel complex or overwhelming. This may be a game that’s played with 2 sticks and 2 buttons, but there’s a fair bit going on. These gameplay details are revealed over several levels and always fully embedded before the next mechanic is introduced.
It may be contrary to the goal of working through a backlog but I’m going to have to look into the other Pixeljunk games after playing this. I have ‘Monsters’, probably from the same bundle, and I’ll be looking forward to Selectron™ picking that in the future (I may even have to manipulate it to do so) but if all the Pixeljunk games are all built with the mantra of ‘easy to play - hard to master’ so clearly at their core then I’m sure I will find more to love in the back-catalogue.
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