Don't get me wrong, the game is quite good.

...but there should absolutely no reason to buy Pixeljunk Shooter. Pixeljunk Shooter Ultimate costs EXACTLY THE SAME, contains the base game and adds 3 extra chapters for about twice the length of the original game.

Steam should disable the option to buy the original Pixeljunk Shooter and guide people to buy the superior version.

PixelJunk Shooter is a dual stick shooter that is a joy to play. The controls are simple. Left stick for movement, right stick for aim. Right trigger for shooting, holding the trigger will unleash missiles. The catch is that missiles will overheat your ship. Cave ship. Not a space ship. The left trigger sends out a grappling hook to pick up stranded miners, which is the objective of the game. When you get the stranded miners, it opens a door to the next level. Each 'stage' has a few levels in it.

The real selling point of this game is the incredible interaction that you have with the environment. You can destroy soft terrain. Your bullets will take out chunks and not the entire terrain / wall. There is water that is fluid and dynamic. It will also cool down your ship when it overheats. There are enemies and lava. The lava flows just as the water, makes your ship overheat and when it meets water, they bond together to form soft terrain that you can destroy. Its such a nice dynamic.

There are powerups to keep your ship cool from the lava's heat. There are objects that you can grapple and tow around, such as a water bomb, good for drowning a volcano. There is a watercan object that you fill in water or lava, and when you take it out, it showers whatever liquid you have in it. Again, there is a lot of interactivity in the game.

This is a game that rewards and encourages exploration. If it looks like there is a way off screen, that's probably a secret area with the game's main collectable diamonds. Well you need diamonds to progress past a certain stage. You will have to go back and play each stage a few times in order to collect enough hidden diamonds. While it might seem like a downer to replay stages and levels, its all fun. Nothing seems like a chore. Its soothing, relaxing, nice to look at and with the incredible interactivity that you have with your environment, no playthrough is really the same.

On top of it all, the game sets itself apart with its art style. Its a beautiful, simple style instead of typical dualstick shooters that overload you on bright visual effects.

It is well worth the price and you can probably pick it up in an indie bundle. I've also got the sequil on PSN and personally, I think this it better.

Really fun Coop game with an interesting gameplay, great physics and artwork. I recommend using a Control.

Rating 7.5/10

What is it?
2d sidescroller, controlling a ship to solve puzzles using water, lava and a magnetic liquid to save your crew members.

The Good:

+ The game's main premise has you navigating the enviroment, destroying the environment so that water and lava can mix forming new terrain for you to destory and progress further along. Keep in mind this is a simplified version of the game, as you progress the game introduces some new mechanics and ships to keep things varied.

+ Combing the different liquids together is really cool and adds a fresh new gameplay idea, combining different liquids together provides different results.

+Graphics fit the enviroment nicely

+ Some cool boss battles

+ Achievements are easy to get and shouldn't provide too much trouble.


The Bad:

- The game doesn't really take its ideas far enough leaving a very easy game. The game doesn't get that much harder as you progress either. I was a bit disappointed when I beat the game.

-Roughly 3 hours long, 5-7 hours if you go for achievements.

Conclusion

Although I had fun, I felt the game was a bit basic for my taste. I would have liked the game to be a bit more challenging especially in regards to the puzzles as the game does introduce some cool elements later on in the game.

PixelJunk Shooter is a twin-stick shooter, with a very big focus on physics (specifically fluids). While exploring the underground caves of a planet, you'll have to interact with lava, water, liquid metal, ice and rock in order to save the scientists who are now trapped.

The story is basically that. You're in a ship, trying to save every scientist. And also collecting hidden gems. Whole it may seem a game about exploration, it didn't quite get to that point, in my opinion. But more on that later.

Let's start with presentation.
The graphics' style is very minimalistic, with soft colours, and yet, it looks great, in my opinion.
It certainly looks unique, and the fluids especially, give it a a special look.
The enemies have a mechanical feel to them, but it fits, along with the Boss Fights.

The music was less of a standout for me, but it was certainly not bad. Just a bit more faint than I'm used to, staying in the background for the most part. It helped with the light-hearted exploration-y atmosphere, I think it was well chosen for the game they were going for.
The sound effects were in the same vein.


How's the gameplay, then?
First off, the game is divided into 3 areas, each with a few levels. Each level also has about 4 (I think) areas to explore, each of them self contained, and fairly small.
The first area is more vulcanic, the second, deeper, is full of ice, and the third, the deepest, has an industrial feel to it.
Each of them has different mechanics associated with the physics. These are all connected to the area it's set in.

You control a little space ship, propelled by thrusters. The movement feels quite great actually, with momentum very notable in the ships handling. It feels great, even though there aren't section to challenge your pilloting skills. It's still good that the tight control is there while you're just flying around.

Then, you have a Hook/Tractor thing to pick up the gems and the scientists you find, and you also have missiles, to destroy rocks and your enemies.

There are also several different types of ships. You'll find modifiers in specific points of the levels. For the standard ship, lava with overheat you, while water will cool you off. Each time you get hit, you don't instantly die, but your heat will rise substancially. To survive, you can either back away, or dive into water.
Besides, you'll find ship modifiers around the levels, for when you need to actually progress the levels.
There is a Magma ship, that shoots lava, a Water ship that shoots water, and can pull ice with is hook, there's an inverted ship, that is hurt by water, and can dive on lava, and there's also a Magnetic ship that repels the liquid metal. These sound, and play really well, but they're highly limited to the levels. You'll only have access to them in the exact section that you need them, and there's no action from the player in discerning which ship he needs for the given section, unfortunately.

In each level, you'll try to find the scientists. You have to deal with all of them in each area to unlock the next one (either save them, or kill them). Every time a scientist dies, you'll lose a life. Your limit is 5, but you'll gain another one each time you collect 100 coins (these are spread around the levels, and also dropped by the enemies).
You also try to find gems, that are used to unlock levels, or just for achievements. Unfortunately, these are very easy to miss by mistake, and you'll have to replay the whole level if you want to 100% it (it is NOT needed, though. I did some thorough exploration the first time around, found every secret area, and still missed a couple of gems in many of the levels. I never had the need to replay levels to proceed though, so the game was designed to keep you going naturally, saving these for the completionists. That's really good, in my view!).
There are also Special Scientists that you collect in your Gallery (yeah, not creepy at all), and these will talk to you, giving you a bit of backstory into their expedition.

The base of the game is out of the way, now.

This game reminded my a bit of Waking Mars. Besides both being about exploring the caves, both are very focused about combining elements (in WM, it's mostly interacting with the creatures, in PJShooter, is with the fluids). While Waking Mars gave you a real feeling of discovery, learning about each species and all about their lives and interactions, that isn't very present in PixelJunk Shooter.
PixelJunk Shooter is a very straightforward game, and also not very challenging. It's something to enjoy casually.

The level design was pretty good, in my opinion, providing good areas to experiment with the fluids, and learn new mechanics without a wall of text. While that was all there and great, the whole game felt like a very big tutorial, in a way. Everything was subtle, but not challenging, and specially not giving the player much freedom.
You'll have everything delivered into your hands when you need it, there's no puzzle solving, or anything, which wasn't what I was expecting. So, if you're looking for an experience of discovery and learning, go play Waking Mars.
If, on the other hand, you want a laid back twin stick shooter with cool physics, give this one a try.

The Boss Fights were the funnest part of the game, for me. They weren't very hard either, as you were pretty comfortable even after getting hit (as long as you were careful). But that comfort gave you the time to learn the Bosses patterns without it feeling frustrating, and led to interesting fights.

I found the game enjoyable, certainly, but in a way that I wasn't expecting. It's very, very linear. There isn't trial and error to understand the fluids, or anything. It's not about learning the mechanics, and then applying them into more complex puzzles. It's mostly about learning on the go, always with simple puzzles. And to be honest... that's fine.
It may not be what you're looking for, but it's good that it exists, for people who do. And it's a very well done game for its purpose.

It's also very cheap on sale and you can easily get it. Go ahead and give this one a try if it sounds appealing!

I enjoyed puzzling my way through and spending extra time in areas after things calmed down some. It was a unique experience that was worth my time.

I would recommend this game if it wasn't for the simple reason that a better version of it is available on Steam, for the same price, named Pixeljunk Shooter Ultimate.

Pros
+ Easy to pick up, easy to master
+ Interesting physics for interesting puzzles.
+ Good looking while easy to run
+ Doesn't overstay its welcome.

Cons
- A twin stick shooter with not much shooting.
- Levels can take a while and each death takes you back to the start of the screen.
- No headscratching levels for the more puzzle enthusiast players.
- Sadly no level editor.
- Shorter than the Ultimate version, for the same price.

PixelJunk™ Shooter is a bit hard for me to categorize but lets call it a physics based Puzzle/Shooter thingy. While I am not a fan of the shooting in the game I don't mind the exploring or puzzle parts of the game and the few times the shooting/fighting shines is during the few boss fights in the game.

A pretty straight forward list of achievements mostly being for collecting the various scientists and gems in the levels which can be fairly challenging to find (at least the gems). The game also has an achievements for finding all secret areas so exploring is recommended. There are really only two achievements that might take some extra work and that is the big kill grind (1000 enemies) and an achievement for collecting 100 coins in a single spin. The later might take a few tries but can be made easier by using a guide to check out ideal spots for it.

Time to 100%: 9 hours

Fun physics twin stick shooter. You go into a mine and need to use your claw to grab miners, diamonds, and clear the way of debris. Multiple types of enemies, three different world with three different types of terrain, and different types of suits that allow you to change your ships attributes.

Easy game, fun to play and really good physics as far as the feel of the motion of your ship. This can be played in two player mode, though I can't say that I actually tried it. A must play with a controller rather than mouse and keyboard.

PixelJunk Shooter is a surprising game. On one hand the premesis is simple and the difficulty is almost non-existant (at least until the third episode). On the other, the developers manage to get a surprisingly large amount of content out of that simple permesis and the game is able to feel fun and fresh throughout the entire run which is quite remarkable. Very little complaints from me as everything hits the mark amazingly well, though the final boss is a bit cheap at times and the game can be finished in around three hours.

So highly recommended.