Bang Man! is a brilliantly minimalist shooter that's out right now on the Google Play Store. It's developed by Byronic Games, the dev behind the similarly tricksy Up, Down, Left, Right.

The game takes its cues from Super Crate Box to some degree. You're stood on a platform made up of squares, onto which aliens are falling. Your weapons drop down after your foe, you snatch it and try to kill them.

But the guns all have different recoil values, which push you back a set number of squares. Get hit by an alien and you die. Fall off the edge of the platform and you die. The bigger the recoil, the more points you earn for killing something with it.

And every time you kill something the aliens speed up. A kill with a weapon with a six recoil slows things down, but I've played for about an hour and failed to hit anything with one of them.

Subscribe to Pocket Gamer on

What ensues is a ludicrously good, super fast platform blaster that usually lasts about a minute. As soon as you die you’re dropped back into the level to start again.

Score chasing is the order of the day. Your highscore is always displayed at the top of the screen, and there's Google Play Games integration to share your score with your friends.

Bang Man! is free to download and features a single 69p / 99c IAP to get rid of the ads.

If you're looking for a bright bite-sized shooter that's full of delicious frustration and a razor-edged compulsion loop, it’s well worth a look.

An iOS version of the game is on the way, and all being well should land on the App Store sometime early next year.