I feel like every time I write about shooters, I always have to add a caveat along the lines of, “I don’t really like shooters… but!” There often is a but, because occasionally one of ’em rolls around that feels like it just gets me, you know? This week, it’s a shooter that feels like it was born to be a Flash game on Newgrounds in the mid-2000s that you’ll sometimes bring up to your friends saying “man, remember that one game?” It’s called Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion, and as simple as its title is, there’s a lot going for it.
For one, it’s being made by Bubby Darkstar, the same developer behind 2021’s Subway Midnight, a game I’m always surprised by insofar that it doesn’t have as far reaching an obsessive fan base as I thought it would get. Subway Midnight is already a visually surreal delight, but Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion really looks like it’s amping up the balls to the walls zaniness factor. It apparently has over 200 NPCs to “interact and have terrible conversations with,” all of which are hand-drawn, a kind of ridiculous feat for what I think might be a dev team of not much more than one.
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You’ve also got more than 50 unique robots to take on, dozens of bosses, “a guy named ‘Donnie’ who’s a real freak” and six levels to wade through. Gameplay wise it looks like your classic boomer shooter by way of Adventure Time, plenty of regular guns to find and use, alongside a few weirder ones. This thing just looks worth playing through if you’re an animation lover alone, the colours are so vibrant and some of the designs on display feel like they were born to be turned into Twitter profile pictures (but like, when Twitter wasn’t what it is now, when it was sometimes ok and not a constant hellfire).
The trailer also clearly points out that not a drop of generative AI was used to make it, a disclaimer that I wish didn’t have to exist, but one I’m glad to see all the same. It’s not too far away from release either – currently it’s slated to be released next month, July 10th. In the meantime, you can wishlist it on Steam here.