Pixel Junk Shooter is the fourth ‘pixeljunk’ title from Q-Games. Previously they have delivered Racers, Monsters (a tower defence title) and Eden (a zany platformer) and Shooter follows its straightforward title by being their most accessible game yet.

PJS is all about shooting but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s a mindless action game. While enemies are plentiful, most of your time will be spent manipulating the world around you with your main weapon and a grappling hook as you head deep beneath the surface of a series of planetoids in an attempt to rescue stranded astronauts. And in these subterranean caverns, your main enemy will not be the variety of strange mechanics creatures which attack you but rather the elemental forces of heat.

Firing your weapon generates heat, with a powered up missile barrage creating even more. In addition, liquid magma will make your temperature skyrocket – forcing you to navigate carefully and quickly in order to keep your systems from shutting down. Fortunately, you can use water supplies to cool yourself off and it is the dynamic between these two opposing forces which forms the main gameplay of Shooter. When water meets magma is hardens and the resulting igneous rock can be destroyed by your gun if you are quick enough – allowing you to gain access to previously unreachable plac

The tension between getting close enough to destroy the magma without burning up and keeping its deadly flow away from the helpless humans is brilliantly explored throughout Shooters levels and stages. Add in the glorious fluid dynamics of the water, which clashes brilliantly with the simplistic though eye catching graphics and PJS manages to find a near perfect balance between accessibility and difficulty. A smattering of brain teasing boss battles add some variety and the various tools you can acquire for harnessing the power of the elements are a joy to discover and use. A local co-op mode is also featured (although friendly fire would have made it more interesting) and for completists there are collectibles and completion ratings to keep you coming back again and again.

With wonderfully responsive controls and a clean, deceptively simple art style, Pixel Junk Shooter is yet another downloadable title which rivals AAA games in the quality of its gameplay. It doesn’t take long to finish but each screen features a great new puzzle to solve with a difficulty level pitched just the right side of frustrating. Perfect high quality, low cost brain teasing to while away the wintry evenings.