Katyusha is a new retro side-scrolling adventure set during the Second World War

• Katyusha is a side-scrolling shooter now available on Android
• It puts you in the shoes of a young girl in World War Two Russia
• The side-scrolling combat focuses on a weird mashup of slow-paced shooting and quaint visuals

The Second World War still looms large over contemporary politics and culture. So it's proven to be a pretty fertile ground for gaming, be that Medal of Honor, Call of Duty or beyond. But I think the newly released Katyusha, available for Android, is a very different beast entirely.

For one, it's got a much cutesier and stylised atmosphere despite dealing with the Eastern Front. And as even the most casual observer of history will be able to tell you, Russia during World War Two was not exactly a barrel of laughs.

You follow the titular Katyusha, a young girl who signs up to join the Red Army and fight off the Nazi forces invading her country. The focus is squarely on combat that runs at a much slower pace than you might expect, and sees you 

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Katyusha is certainly a bit of a confusing one. On the one hand, you have the undeniably stylised and quaint-looking graphics. But on the other, the young girl you're playing and her pet hawk are regularly passing by the corpses of civilians that've been summarily executed by the enemy forces occupying your country.

It's not exactly Dead Cells, is what I'm saying. Still, I'm sure there's a niche of people out there who want to play something like Katyusha, and there's an undeniable, very strange appeal to it that certainly makes it remind me of something like Metal Slug by way of Come and See. And who knows? Maybe that's what you need to beat the January blues.

But if you'd rather build things up than bring them down, we've got you covered, too. Why not take a look at our review of Dawnmaker, a city builder where you restore light to a polluted world by maximising your city's efficiency and optimisation.