At first I thought the title of the game was a utilitarian way of describing the game as a rudimentary dual stick shooter that was made for the working man.
After playing it, however, the title appears to be creator Jonathan Mak’s way of telling everyone he does drugs every damn day.
He describes this “game” as an album of games that examines “the expressive power of abstract shooters.” Which isn’t helping his case; were you to play his game and have him standing behind you as you groove to the abstract guitar noises and tell you about the expressive powers the game had…you would most certainly know he was on heroin.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m entirely too thankful for all the drugs he has to be on. Everyday Shooter is an expressive experience indeed. But not for the reasons that Mak probably wants it to be.
If his goal was to move people with the simply gameplay of a 2d shooter he most certainly has failed. I’m more than a little irritated that he chose to limit the direction of fire to 8 dicrete choices–N, NW, W, SW, etc. Sometimes I feel more defeated by the lack of control subtlety than by the ridiculous amount of random crap float across the screen. Abstract shooters are good for expressing two emotions: anger and addiction. Which Mak has provided in spare.
Luckily most other area of Everyday Shooter stand out to overshadow the shallow, even for an “abstract shooter”, gameplay. The main focus of the game is the sound and the experience more so than the gameplay, in fact, there is an entire mode devoted to just experiencing the levels and not playing to survive. The sound is so interesting each level stands to tell a story of its own, a short musical story, but a story nonetheless.
Everyday Shooter is a game that you show to others. The experience is worthy of being shared, if only to share some of the pain of trying to pick up tiny dots for points with your infinitesimally small craft you pilot. More so to share the music.
Art Direction: Trippy, but hard to comprehend what’s going on at some points.
Sound Design: Worth the price of admission alone.
Gameplay: Did I mention you’re a tiny dot of the screen full of tiny dots that shoot large and small dots at you? Plus the combo tricks are cool the first time you figure them out, and then get stale after that.
Games as Art: A step in the right direction.
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