One of the nice things about indie developers is that they are very open about their games; something that's been underlined by Colin Walsh, the one-man-band known as Celsius Game Studios.

He's been working on his space shooter Red Nova for what seems like most of 2010; keeping us up to date with new video footage during the process.

But even the longest journey eventually ends and so it is that Red Nova is finally due out. Prior to launch, we got a build of the game to spend some time with.

Technically, an inertial space shooter, this means that when you're heading in one direction, you maintain that momentum until you turn, slowly accelerating in the new direction. This gives Red Nova a slidey feel characteristic of games such as Asteroids.

The other key element to the gameplay is how you use energy.

Being the product of one person, Red Nova doesn't ship with loads of modes or missions. Walsh says he'll be adding those in future updates, although you do get three types of ship to choose between.

Instead you get a basic survival arena mode that has you flying around, avoiding incoming fire, picking up power ups, and shooting down the bad guys.

Direction is controlled via your left thumb, with your right controlling your attacks.

Just hold down to fire your lasers. If you have enough energy you can drag left and hold to automatically target enemies. Lifting your thumb will then launch homing missiles. In addition, you can drag up and release to use your current power up, again if you have enough energy.

Your available power up is displayed in the top right of the screen. You can tap and drag it to discard it, if you don't want to use it.

Meanwhile, in the top left corner are your status gauges. These show your ship's energy reserves in terms of your available shield, hull integrity, and the available power for current power up in a set of nested concentric circles.

Hence, although Red Nova has pick-up-and-play elements, if you want any measure of success - even on the lowest of the three difficulty levels - you have to carefully keep an eye on your status, as well as nimbly manoeuvring through the starry skies.

Perhaps a game best suited to a hardcore mentality, nevertheless, everyone will be able to try it out as it will only cost 99c, €0.79 or 59p in its iPhone and iPad universal app form.

Red Nova will be hitting the App Store on December 14, and here's the most recent video footage.