Hello there! I’m Mo, founder of Vertex Pop, a tiny independent video game studio based in Toronto, Canada. I’m really excited to introduce We Are Doomed, a twin-stick shooter where you zap polygon baddies with an insanely overpowered laserbeam. I want to tell you all about the core mechanics of the game, the unique visuals, and my plans to bring it to PS4 and PS Vita.

And I’ll be showing We Are Doomed at PlayStation Experience next month, so please come by if you’re attending!

The first thing you’ll notice is that the player is armed with a powerful but close-range laserbeam weapon. If you want to get anywhere in We Are Doomed, you need to dive right into the action. Hanging back and picking off baddies will simply not do.

You’ll also want to charge your already overpowered laserbeam into a SUPERBEAM, which is when things get a little absurd. The SUPERBEAM is a brief triumph: a beam that goes all the way across the screen, zapping everything it touches in short order. You’ll want to make the most of your time with it. But remember to keep your cool, because you’re still vulnerable when using it.

The entire game is built on a risk/reward mentality. Every mechanic is designed to make throwing yourself into danger and dashing across the arena to collect Trinkets (the purple cubes) pay off. It makes for a fast-paced game of constantly evaluating your options while maintaining composure.

In this way, We Are Doomed is about feeling empowered and challenged, often at the same time. But just as important is experiencing the beautiful explosion of geometry, color and light. Let’s talk about that.

We Are Doomed features a unique lo-fi aesthetic, with bold shapes, glitching geometry, and neon colors. This isn’t a throwback to the way games used to look, but an alternate reality scenario: what if texture-mapped, shader-calculated, photo-realistic graphics never happened? What if instead, flat shaded, vector-based graphics ruled the world? We Are Doomed explores these questions in gloriously colorful fashion.

I’m really excited to bring We Are Doomed to PlayStation. It looks beautiful on the big screen (1080p and 60 frames per second, of course) and plays beautifully on DualShock 4. I’m committed to bringing the game to Vita as well, but that’ll take a little longer. I’m just one person, cut me some slack. :)

The best part about PlayStation though, is the built-in community of gamers (That’s you!) who love a little friendly competition. I’m looking forward to seeing the leaderboards light up with unbelievable high scores.

On that note, if you fancy yourself a pro shmup player and are coming to PlayStation Experience please come by my booth! I’d love to see how the game fares against your skills. Of course, if you just want to have a fun, neon-filled arcade experience, I’m equally eager to see you.

We Are Doomed is coming to PS4 in early 2015, with the Vita following a little later.