Deathrun TV is a twin-stick shooter, of which there are many. But it’s a twin-stick created by Laser Dog Games, a micro-studio with a knack for making games that just feel really good. Whether it’s the inverted controls of ALONE, which drew you into its world of racing spaceships with unexpected force, or the smooth back-and-forth movement of Catchee, the team’s recent iOS charmer, which also features one of the greatest theme tunes ever written, this is an outfit that knows that the details count.
Which suits twin-sticks brilliantly, because at their best these games are all details. That lovely hit-pause when you get a new item in Deathrun TV: that’s a perfect detail for sure. But so is the strobing red rectangles that fire up when you head into a new level. Deathrun TV is a spiritual successor to Smash TV, in that it’s a twin-stick set in an ultra-violent game show where you race between arenas blasting monsters. But those strobing red rectangles are a message for twin-stick fans that the lineage here goes back even further, back to the game that Smash TV is a spiritual successor to! It’s Robotron, baby!
And it really is. Robotron didn’t just cement the controls of the twin-stick, it also threw in a fascinating wrinkle: alongside all the things you had to kill, there were a few things you had to protect. In Robotron these were wandering members of the world’s last human family. In Deathrun TV they’re blindfolded innocents chucked into the arena in jumpsuits. Navigate the monsters and bullet-hell gunfire, take out your enemies, but also collect these little blindfolded guys. Not only will they daisy-chain behind you like a primary school class forming a crocodile on a trip to the local library, if you can get them safely to one of the many exit spots scattered about the levels, they’ll give you a bonus: faster movement, maybe, or a little sword drone that rushes around chopping people up, perhaps. Money in the bank!
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