Capsule Review: Shütshimi
A retro-styled horizontal scrolling shooter whose action comes in ten-second increments. In between, you have a few seconds to pick one of three random modifiers - there are hats, different weapons, upgrades or downgrades, and various silly cosmetic effects. Everything is presented with tongue held firmly in cheek and the jokey descriptions for the modifiers and their unrelated icons make it hard to suss out what your options actually are in the few seconds available. It may have flowed better to simply apply a modifier at random and not bring the gameplay to a grinding halt every ten seconds. The shooting is fast-paced, but since the game can’t do anything scoped greater than a few seconds, its bite-sized novelty-over-depth gameplay would probably have been more suited to mobile than to PC and PlayStation.
I Stopped Playing When: I played for a while and enjoyed it, but it wasn’t long before I felt like I’d seen everything the game had to offer. The unpredictability of the modifiers made it unappealing to try to master the game and shoot for high scores, and the frequent interruptions prevented me from reaching a flow state, so there was no reason to keep playing.
Two Stars: Meh. The game has some merit - it probably held my attention for at least an hour or I came back to it for more than one play session. But there wasn't enough draw for me to stick with it for the long haul.