It's a Space Thing review - How can multiplayer arcade shooting go wrong?

They say in space, no one can hear you scream. Which would be quite handy if a mad man with a laser gun were coming after you.

And while that may be the case in It's a Space Thing, you'll probably find yourself screaming in frustration more than you do in fear.

Because as much as it's a hyper-energetic, frantic, and fun shooter, it's tied into an almost random difficulty curve that dips and spikes with little to no warning.

The basic premise of It's a Space Thing is that there are two people on screen – you and the other guy – and you have to shoot the other guy.

You run along a looping platform that fits on a single screen, and have to take out the guy above you who runs around wildly shooting at you.

You can drop up to three shields at a time to protect you from his bullets, which can be destroyed, and you have your own gun which spits bullets out at rapid pace, and takes a short while to reload if you run out of ammo.

Both you and your opponent can only take one hit before dying, which leads to a number of levels in which you just open fire straight away and win.

The game tries to compensate for this by giving your opponent a head-start, but even so, it's pretty easy to just start shooting wildly and move on to the next level.

After you've shot your opponent ten times, you'll face off against a boss, the real meat of the game.

And then you'll die, and be sent right back to the start, because the bosses are super hard.

There's no checkpoints to speak of, just a long ten fights back to where you were with the boss, before getting shot in the face again and having to climb right back to it.

It's annoying, because all of your hard work is undone in the blink of an eye, and all you have to show for it is a high score.

That's even if you make it that far in the first place, as the regular enemy AI is so erratic that you might end up facing a clever, tricky opponent on your very first battle, or midway through a good streak, and lose everything once again.

It's a Space Thing isn't necessarily a bad game. Once you get into the swing of it, it's a lot of fun, and comes with a two-player mode that works wonderfully for short bursts of competition among friends.

But that whole feeling of fun and elation is so easily snatched away from you by a random difficulty spike that it comes away feeling slightly unfair.

If you like fast, hard-as-nails arcade games, it's definitely worth a look. Just don't be surprised if you end up throwing your phone against a wall six fights in.