BORE BLASTERS will be your next fixation - out now

What's not to absolutely love about flying around in a gyrocopter and using its machinegun to blast away rocks and creepy creatures? BORE BLASTERS will absolutely suck away your time. Note: key provided by ÜberStrategist.

Scottish studio 8BitSkull have crafted something truly satisfying here, a game that you'll want to keep pumping hours into as you see all the wonderful pixels flying around as you smash your way deeper into it. I put quite a lot of time into the demo doing repeat runs, and it's great to see the expanded full game really delivers on that feeling of just wanting one more run.

It's not a complicated game at all. The basics really are simple. You fly around and pick an island on the main map, then get dropped down in your little gyrocopter to blast through some rocks. Simple is good in this case. Much like the rise of Vampire Survivors and attack of the clones, that's the real key. It's all about repeating the runs, doing better, unlocking more and smashing through as many rocks as you can to get more monies. Even when you fail, you keep what you earned to power yourself up for another run to keep doing better. It's great!

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Oh hey, you don't see me quoted too often in a trailer. Simply delicious indeed. Wise words from me.

It can get pretty frantic too, partly because of the fuel system. You're not supposed to be able to complete things in one run, or even two. The fuel is a system to keep you focused, keep you moving and trying to reach your goals and finish the little quests it sprinkles in. Fuel is ticking down constantly, and while you can find fuel whilst exploring, there's not a whole lot of it. Thankfully, with the amount of tools at your disposal - it's not a big deal. You have a special ability to move quickly and just absolutely annihilate every block in your path, then add to that all the upgrades you can do and it's pure brilliant pixel-art mining chaos.

I love the claustrophobic feeling you can get from some of it too. One of the biomes has these vine blocks that repeatedly grow back, and if you're not careful they can box you in. Making it worse, as you go deeper down your visibility reduces into a cone in front of you too, so you don't exactly see what's creeping up behind you. You'll also see some really weird blocks, like eyeballs that get angry and reduce your vision further if you destroy them when open and so on. There's a good few little tricks the developer spread throughout the game to keep you on your toes like that.

For people who enjoy twin-stick shooters, and love the constantly changing upgrades in titles like Vampire Survivors, you're going to love it. You gradually level up during your run to unlock temporary upgrades like explosive bullets, longer bullet range, a drill that drops down automatically every so often, periodically throw bombs around, more bullets per second and the list goes on. You can unlock more of these upgrades as you complete each island too, so the game keeps giving you more.

Then there's the permanent upgrades you can do outside of runs with more health, more bullets per second, your magnet range for picking up gems and more. You'll also find some unlockable characters too as you progress through the little story and quests, each with their own unique abilities.

Since you're a dwarf, there also of course had to be goblins to fight at some point. Some of the battles can end up quite a challenge too, because of the constant race against time on your fuel, along with needing space to fight as some blocks can take a while to destroy while you end up surrounded by enemies. Not even just that - everything hurts you. Bump a wall? That's a health point gone, and you don't start with much.

You won't be disappointed with this one if you like easy pick up and play games, that you can blast through for as little or as long as you like thanks to runs not lasting particularly long, so not only is it a great game to sink a couple of hours into in the evening but it's fab for coffee breaks all the same.

Good reasonable price point too considering how much time you can spend with it at only £7.99 (outside of discounts).

You can buy BORE BLASTERS on Steam. It has Native Linux support.