If you’re a fan of arena shmups of the twin stick variety, you’ve been spoiled for choice over the last few years. Ever since Bizarre Creation’s (RIP) Geometry Wars was the first mega-hit for XBLA, it seems developers around the world have been on a major retro shooter kick, with everyone wanting to bring their own take on the genre to the table. Up steps Rob Hale, the man behind solo indie outfit, Squid In A Box. Waves is his first release, and it’s his answer to modern twin stick shooter craze, and I’ll let you in on a secret: It’s a bit bloody good.

More than a bit, in fact. I’d probably go as far to say it’s a lot bloody good. The first thing you’ll notice when booting up Waves is that it is a beautiful game. As a handy skipable splash screen kindly informs us, it’s powered by unreal technology. Unreal Engine 3 specifically. Whether it’s the dozens and dozens of enemies on screen at once, the glorious sea of undulating hexagons that make up the background, or the explosions of bright particles that every enemy spits out upon death, it’s clear that technology has been put to good use here. Waves has a level of graphical fidelity that’s a step up from any similar games I’ve played, which will no doubt be a major selling point for anyone who’s impressed by a pretty face.

But Waves has got more than good looks going for it, it’s as smartly designed as it is pleasing to behold. It’s an ever changing intricate tango of risk/reward, combos and sweet sweet score multipliers. Killing three enemies in one second results in a combo, where the total score for all three enemies you killed is doubled. Manage to kill another three enemies in the next second? Great, that’s another combo, tripling the points you get for all the enemies in that run, and this carries on as longs as you can keep shooting the mean neon shapes that are after you. Early on, before there’s too many enemies around, you might want to hold off from killing them, until there’s more around for you to chain together in a combo. Decisions decisions, and not more than a split second to make them in.

You get more than just a score multiplier for successfully chaining together lots of enemies though. Once you hit your tenth combo, you’re rewarded with a smart bomb, to destroy any enemies in your vicinity, you have to use it quick though, if you break your combo, you’ll lose the bomb. Mastering this smart bomb mechanic is the secret to getting those leaderboard topping high scores, and without effective chaining of combos and smart bombing, you’re going to struggle to score anything particularly impressive.

Another key tool in your arsenal is the slow-mo mechanic. You have a buffer that fills up over time, which gives you the ability to slow everything down for a short span of time. Great for making a sly escape when your surrounded by neon death from all sides. Except you don’t want to use it just defensively: Any baddies you dispatch of whilst time has slowed down to a crawl are worth double, so it’s a careful balancing act between making sure you have some slow-mo available for when you need it to save you by the skin of your teeth, but also liberally slowing down time for mega-points when you’re about to kill a big group of baddies: Especially in conjunction with the smart bomb.

And you’re final trick for points-boosting? The game also rewards you by doubling the score you get from any enemies killed at close range (a “Point blank” bonus), and again, this can be used with both the smartbomb and the slow mo. Get right up in their grills, hit slow mo, unleash a smart bomb, and the points will roll in. When you get a good run going, nothing quite compares to the BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! of series of well places smartbombs.

Those are the general rules anyway: There are actually multiple gametypes, each with slightly different playstyle, and each stretching a slightly different set of skills. There’s the evade centric “Bombing run mode”, where you can’t shoot, so just have to weave in and out of baddies, collecting bombs dropped on the floor to use against your foes, or there is survival mode, where you can take all the time you need, and you’ve got three lives to score the best you can. Then there’s the Crunch time: 3 minutes to rack up the highest score you can, no time to hang about.

Waves almost feels like an experiment to find out how much content does a game really need. It successfully delivers a meaty, engrossing experience without needing any real level design or huge amount of content. Beyond the different enemy types, and the different game modes, you’ll see pretty much everything Waves has to offer in the first couple of minutes: But the joy is in developing your skills and mastering the rules. You’ll want to pay attention to all the different enemy types, learn their nuances so you can predict what where they’re going next, and hopefully outmanoeuvre them.

Instead of relying on lots of content to keep players entertained, Waves is a small game that is so polished and well put together that it keeps you coming back for more and more. I’ve had plenty of fierce competition on the leaderboards (I’m trouncing Rob “Squid In A Box” Hale in almost every mode), and despite have already played it for around twenty hours, I’m not even close to done with it yet.

Niggles? Oh go on then. I did have a slightly longer list of minor complains, but before I’d got this review finished the developer went and patched three of them away, leaving me far less to moan about. I’d quite like to be able to chose which song to listen too. The game has a great soundtrack by SMILETRON, but I’d like to maybe use a different song for the different game modes, but as it is it just cycles through the songs. Also, If you have a bit of a bad start to a run, and want to retry again from the beginning, you have to pause, then move down through 5 menu options before you’re at retry, adding a couple of seconds to the procedure. Oh, and sometimes the leaderboards can take quite a while to load (on my machine at least). Barely worth mentioning to be honest, and as you can probably tell those are the kind of frustrations you only notice after a game has held you in it’s grip for a a sizeable chunk of time.

It’s a brilliant little game, slick as hell, and fantastic value at the asking price of $9.99/£6.99, you don’t want to miss this one out.

I’ll see you on the leaderboards.

[Squid In A Box]