Children Of The Sun

René Rother’s acrid revenge thriller – an action game with its limbs broken and forcibly rearranged into the shape of a spatial puzzler – is at once a bonafide original and an unlikely throwback. Cast your eyes right and you wouldn’t blink if we told you this was a forgotten Grasshopper Manufacture game from the early PS3 era (we won’t be at all surprised if this finds a spot on Suda51’s end-of-year list).

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But otherwise it feels like a Devolver Digital joint from the publisher’s early days. We’re thinking of one game in particular: the perspective might have changed, but the abrasive, video-nasty vibe of Hotline Miami is here in abundance. Like in that game, you’ve effectively got one chance – but whereas there a single bullet could bring about your end, here it is your salvation.

Licking the barrel of her rifle, it’s evident that our masked protagonist takes some measure of enjoyment from her murderous work. Having escaped from a deadly cult, she now returns to erase all trace of it – with just one round in the chamber. As she visits a string of cult gatherings, she must take out every member in a single surgical strike. A bullet might seem an unstoppable force, but to her it’s not an immovable object; rather, she can use her telekinetic powers to steer it between targets, in the manner of Yondu’s whistle-guided yaka arrow from Guardians Of The Galaxy.