The bullet-hell FPS Mothergunship is a game about making guns and firing guns being co-developed by the guy who made Tower of Guns. A taste of how those various gun parts will come together can now be had by way of a "Gun Crafting Range" demo that went live today on Steam.

The demo begins with a simple bit of gun-upgrading and a quick trip through the FPS gun range, but ramps up in a hurry with more and different attachments, and more and different things to shoot at. Guns become increasingly complex, dangerous, and ammo-hungry, and the need to balance raw firepower with energy conservation very quickly becomes apparent. I whipped this thing up, for instance (it's a terrible mess of a design, but I was in a hurry), and it's good for approximately 2.4 seconds of fire before it's dry.

This is my gun.

Narration through the demo is provided by two characters, the Colonel, who comes off as sort of a semi-deranged game show host, and Chief Gungineer Wilkinson, who makes no secret of the fact that she's desperately bored and would rather be doing anything else. It's starts off fairly dry and dull but spins up into some serious weirdness, and it's actually pretty funny.

The demo obviously doesn't reflect the full game—the actual shooting bit, where you get to try out the guns you've created, is just a series of small arenas filled with various sorts of bots—but it's a promising start. The full Mothergunship doesn't have a release date yet but it's expected to be out sometime this year, and there's a site you can trip through at mothergunship.com.