Develop 2014: Hands on with Modern Dream's '70s set shooter LA Cops

It's painfully sunny in Brighton, but I have a drink and an iPad, and the bar is air conditioned. The chairs are fat brown leather, the tables are polished, and I suspect the beer is more expensive than the train ticket to get here.

It's a strange setting to be playing a game about '70s cops. Everything in the Metropole Hilton screams of southern seaside grandeur. LA Cops on the other hand is a primary coloured crunch of sharp violence and sunglasses.

Ollie Clarke of Modern Dream talks me through the start of the game. He's passionate and polite, and we talk games and travel before he hands me the iPad and lets me take a crack at a mission.

My two cop team is a little stumbly to begin with. They're shuffling through the tight corridors of a skyscraper that's been taken over by a disgruntled crooner.

I'm trying to get them to work in tandem to shoot down the assembled goons and take out the whirring tape-based servers.

LA Cops isn't a straight shooter. Playing it like Geometry Wars with flares and shotguns ends in an untimely and gore-splattered death.

You have limited bullets, even more limited health, and the podgy, turtle-necked enemies are almost always alert to your presence.

It's a puzzle with guns. I take things slowly, checking the corners and making sure I don't leave either of my team exposed.

You swap between your cops by tapping their portraits. The one you're not directly manhandling stands like a turret, blasting everything that wanders into their arc of fire.

You control the other with a floating stick and a series of buttons. You need to target your enemies, conserve your bullets, and if things get desperate mash the melee button.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by a single foe if you're not planning ahead. Sweeping through rooms involves selecting a target, swiping and pinching around the level to ensure that none of the patrolling guards are going to spot you, then bursting through the door and hoping you shoot first.

I lure a goon through a doorway, just about manage to dodge his shotgun blast, and let my partner take him out with a couple of popped shots. It feels good. It feels like I'm learning.

Then two of his friends turn up and shoot the pair of us. I swear quite loudly. Trying to repeat the feat results in an even quicker death. The violence is swift and cruel. A couple of shots is all it takes to ruin a not-so-well-thought-through plan.

But there's a witty crackle to the game as well. It riffs on buddy cop movies, dropping in a disgruntled chief of police, snappy cut scenes, and a bright aesthetic that's all its own.

Clarke enthuses next to me. This is an early iOS build, still a little rough around the edges, but the core of the gameplay is clear to see.

There'll be around three hours of content in the finished product, with nine levels cut into manageable slices. Modern Dream is aiming for a £2.99 / $4.99 price tag when the game hits iOS and Android,

There's an obvious Syndicate influence in the top-down chaos, and Clarke lists it amongst the games that inspired LA Cops.

There are others too. Hotline Miami shines through here and there, and the crisp clean lines of the graphics speak of pop art and movie posters.

Even after more than half an hour of play I'm still not quite on top of the rhythm, but there's a seedy compulsion to the tactical gunplay that makes me tap retry over and over.

By the end of our time together Ollie is playing on the iPad and I'm poking my way through the iPhone version. Neither is a finished build, but we sit in rapt silence, occasionally laughing at our misfortunes and lucky escapes.

Clarke shows me the mission complete screen. The exasperated chief of police gives me a D for my efforts. It's probably more than I deserve. I finish my beer, begrudgingly hand back the iPhone, and wander back into the sun.

LA Cops is rich with promise. A great idea built up into something special by a team that clearly cares about the game it's making.

This is definitely one to keep an eye out for when it hits the App Store sometime in the fourth quarter of 2014.