This muscle-bound fish means business but will he be able to hold your attention for more than 10 seconds?

Shutshimi is a game about a hardened fish that has had a tough life. Traumatised by the time invaders entered his home and he had to fend for himself, he tries to recollect the story but sadly, being a fish, his memory isn’t all that great so it tends to come back in 10 second bursts.

Shutshimi gives you a beefy armed fish wielding a gun to play as and it’s up to you to take down the onslaught of enemies that come your way. Laser shooting sharks, spinning sloths and fire breathing dragons are all out to get you but weirdly enough, this isn’t the weirdest aspect of the game. This side-scrolling shooter looks similar to the SNES classics of yore but has a unique twist as each section is played in 10 seconds bursts.

With 10 seconds of gameplay and 10 seconds to choose your next item, weapon or hat, it plays like a side-scrolling shooter but with a WarioWare flavour. With just 10 seconds to choose your next item, all of which have masses of hilarious yet sometimes nonsensical descriptions, choosing the item can be as butt-clenching and heart pounding as the gameplay itself.

The item you choose will decide how the next 10 seconds of your game plays out, and can change things in subtle, helpful or hilarious ways. Sometimes you’ll get given a shotgun to unleash more damage on your foes, other times you may get a fish bowl around your character which gives you extra protection from hits and other times it’s a new hat that gives you hair like Guile or the looks of Commander Video.

You have to be careful what you choose even though it may be hard with the time you have and the crazy descriptions that through you off, as whilst some items are super helpful, others are the opposite. There’s one item that makes the game play at twice the speed which is almost always a sure-fire way to land yourself in hot water, another will make you massive and easier for enemies to hit and another makes the screen a colourful disco with spinning butts in the background, which is both amazing and incredibly distracting.

All of these make for a really interesting and refreshing take on the genre though, and promise that each attempt is different and you never quite know what is waiting on the next screen.



Whilst the main aim of the game is getting the best score possible, there’s a surprising amount of content and depth in this title. Unlike a lot of ‘endless’ titles, this one does actually have an end when you have destroyed all the main bosses – You get rewarded with not only a celebratory screen but also an upgraded weapon. Don’t worry though, once the game is ‘completed’ you can still continue on to try and reach those lofty high-score heights.

There are a couple of modes too, such as a Boss Rush mode where you aim to kill all the giant foes as fast as you can and a hard mode, or indeed ‘Heartless’ mode that can be

unlocked by completing a particular achievement. Speaking of achievements, there’s plenty here and they add a new dimension of fun to the game.



There are a bunch of hats and achievements to collect in this game, giving even more reason to pour endless hours into getting a new high score. Hats can be unlocked on the items screen in-game between your crazy 10-second massacres whilst achievements can be unlocked by completing specific tasks within the game.

There’s so many hats to collect that, besides killing bosses and going for sky high scores, you’ll be spending hours just to collect ‘em all, and it’s worth it thanks to the ‘The Chapeaupedia’ which displays all of your wonderful hats with great and sometimes hilarious descriptions for each one.

There’s a bunch of achievements to unlock in this title that range from the fairly simple ‘Unlock 25 hats’ to the insane such as ‘Absorb every Ghost Serpent head in a single wave’ – They add a new spin to the game and give you more to do than simply racking up those points.

Stat junkies among you will also be glad to know that the Records screen not only has your best score but a bunch of information such as your total number of deaths, waves cleared, highest wave and amount of kills in total – The kind of information you can sit and salivate over.



The style of this game looks awesome, with both the graphics and music being some of the most authentic 16-bit representations I’ve seen in a long time. With a true rainbow of colours and chunky sprites, the game pops out of the screen. The character designs are great too, taking a clear inspiration from 80’s and 90’s cartoons such as Biker Mice from Mars and Street Sharks. The music is really catchy, but then it has to be if it’s in 10 second bursts. You’ll be humming those 10 second jingles as soon as you put the game down. Thankfully there’s ‘Chill Party’, a mode that lets you just sit back and watch an on-screen rave with a bunch of characters and the option to cycle through some of the games awesome music.

A side-scrolling shooter with a difference, this title is really unique and great fun. It’ll have you coming back again and again not just for your high-score chasing desires but just to have a few laughs, to collect some hats and to try and unlock the next achievement.