Developed by Rich Edwards with music by Syphus, PSC is a ‘neo retro’ game which is a cross between a Alien Breed, Bomberman and Cannon Fodder. At the start of the game you name 4 soldiers and the goal is to take them through an increasingly difficult series of randomly generated missions. Your four soldiers all run as one single unit and aim dependant on where your mouse is looking, each unit can hold a grenade and as you level up throughout the game more grenade types become available. Grenades are where the core of the action is. There’s a huge variety of them to use; some are aim guided missiles, deployable turrets, teleporters, decoys, tripmines, lazer spreads…there’s loads of them and it’s always fun to discover a new one. You never know what grenade types you could be rolling with so this adds a sense of improvisation to the gameplay as each type behaves very differently.

Explosions are gloriously digitized in this game, they cause huge fireball spreads which wrap round the edges of walls and solid objects, it’s very Bomberman and much like Bomberman it’s easy to get caught in the fire. When one of your soldiers dies he is replaced by a new randomly named recruit, it’s a nice touch which adds a very slight element of personality to your units. It would be nice to customise the look and colours of the soldiers but the game doesn’t need anything like that as the core combat is just so much fun.

Initially I rolled my eyes at the chiptune soundtrack, so many games are using the style these days – but after a while I started to get really into it. Syphus is a very talented musician, I even got into the unfortunate Dubstep styled tracks. Sound design as a whole is exquisitely crunchy and satisfying. There’s something very sonically pleasing about the game, almost like your ears are being massaged and it can keep you in the game for long stretches at a time.

I’ve racked up about 6 hours in the game and I’ve only had two sessions with it so the addiction level is high – for  £6.99 on Steam it’s easy to recommend. It looks fantastic, sounds fantastic and is bringing something new to the crowded arena shooter market.

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About the author

Michael Manning

Michael is a sound designer and composer working in the games industry. His portfolio can be found at www.manningaudio.com