A few months back, it was referred to as either "the next PixelJunk" or "PixelJunk 1-4." For some reason, Q-Games didn't feel up to naming their own game, and, instead, asked the community for their help. A trailer was released to help spark some creativity, showing a game that looked a lot like a two-stick shooter, but appeared to break away from the genre in a number of ways. It seemed like it had an adventure backbone, some sort of a story, and interesting physics-based gameplay - all elements that don't really fit in with the Geometry Wars and Super Stardust HD crowd. A variety of names came back, like PixelJunk Atlantis, PixelJunk Depths, and PixelJunk S.O.S!, but in the end they went with PixelJunk Shooter, which seemed to be a bit on the nose. However, their record has, to this point, been flawless, and it was assumed they were ready to, yet again, make something great. Sometimes assumptions are correct.

Right from the start, the PixelJunk charm shines bright. It takes place at some point in the future on a far away planet, where a mining operation went quite poorly, leaving dozens of workers stranded in a monster-infested underground base without any hope of escape. The job of the player is to rescue these workers, all the while destroying monsters and collecting diamonds scattered throughout. After undocking from the ERS Pina Colada, which looks like a large, yellow cruise ship, the game begins, with every level diving deeper into the ground, and the player encountering more difficult, varied foes. The first few levels are simple, with the player competing with lava and water, which mix to create rock, and serve as both damaging and healing factors to the player's ship's heat meter.