The twin-stick shooting mechanics implemented by Pixelbite feel dependable and accurate, with the controls logically mapped to an MFi controller. Players will never feel with Xenowerk that they are playing a hastily ported touchscreen game, and this carries right through from the control scheme to the menu navigation and layout. Kudos to Pixelbite for causing Xenowerk to feel like a built-for-console game, rather than a mere port of its iOS counterpart.

On this solid foundation, the studio has built a colourful sci-fi shooter, bursting with varied weapons and vibrant, neon colour schemes. The list of weapons and characters to unlock is satisfyingly long, and of a satisfying variety. From assault rifles, lasers that bounce off walls, various shot-gun offerings, grenade launchers, guns that shoot electricity, plasma and more, players of all persuasions will find the tools to suit their style.

But there is a lot more to like about the weaponry than just the variety. While guns have unlimited ammo, they also overheat from constant use. This of course encourages players to develop some accuracy and movement skill, and also to use the special abilities such as the freezing of all enemies within a certain radius. Two weapon slots are available to take into battle, and the obvious choice is of course to take something fast, with a secondary weapon that does heavy damage. When one weapon overheats you can toggle to the secondary while it cools down. A nice touch however, is that Pixelbite have not locked the primary and secondary slots into the usual rapid fire/light damage, slow fire/heavy damage cliché. If spraying bullets is your thing, feel free to equip two weapons of the rapid firing variety, and toggle between them if one overheats. It’s a refreshing break from the norm.

Weapons will automatically upgrade from frequent use, so if you find something you like – the more you use it, the better it gets.

Where this variation and diversity ends unfortunately, is in the level design. It won’t be many levels into the experience until you’ll start to notice all the same office chairs, computers, cubicles, explosive barrels, and pot plants appearing in different configurations. Each level offers another maze to shoot through that looked exactly the same as the last maze, just with a different layout. Locations are made up of 10-20 sub-levels, but even moving from one overall location to the next – with differing titles such as Medical Research, Military Branch, Factory X, and more – doesn’t bring much change in the scenery.

The enemies, while nicely modeled on mutated plant-life, also lack a little in variation.

Without Xenowerk’s solid twin-stick shooting mechanics, and huge arsenal of weapons to experiment with, it would be a hard title to recommend. Fortunately though, these positives end up outweighing the lack of level diversity, and combined with the minimal asking price (it’s currently $1.49 on the Australian App Store) there’s definitely a fun time to be had within Pixlebite’s creation.

In A Nutshell:

Despite a lack of level variety, Xenowerk boasts solid twin-stick shooting gameplay, and a huge arsenal of sci-fi weaponry, all depicted in vibrant neon colours. Great bang for your buck.