Title: Super Pantito
Length: Varies, depending on skill level, but I would estimate that you could finish the game in around 10 minutes. I doubt that you're going to win it first try, though!

Super Pantito is a cute 2D shooter arcade game made in Game Maker. It's smooth, it's colourful, and it's well-designed. Super Pantito is as super as its title suggests, excelling in both graphical polish and gameplay. Engaging and highly addictive, it's hard to believe that developer Mirak made this in merely one month. This puts him on the map as a game developer to watch. Get ready your thumbs and fingers! This shooter will demand a lot of button mashing. If you have arthritis or if you get sore phalanges easily, keep out. Else: download promptly.

Despite being inexperienced with shooters, I loved this game to teensy weensy bits. Enemies do not lack in variety, and each is programmed with unique behaviour to keep you on your toes and constantly learning. Awareness is the name of the game! One of the make-or-break aspects of designing arcade games is to aim to eliminate accidental deaths. Super Pantito reduces unfair moments, managing to feel challenging but not needlessly vicious.

Cute cinematic cutscenes introduce a Pan named Pantito, and our dilemma, which is muffins raining from the sky and destroying his planet. Soon he dons a cape and aims to shoot them down from the celestial heavens, in an attempt to save his loved ones and other strangers. Game features chibi drawings and animations custom-made for each scene. The game feels tight and responsive.

Deaths bring you right back to the beginning of the game. It would have been nice to indicate to the player that there was a cutscene skip function; I only figured that out because I was experimenting with making a drum beat using only keyboard and the tongue popping off the roof of my mouth. Another thing to convey to the player would have been the idea that "mashing" the X-key is a lot more effective than just holding it down (like I did for the first 3 or so playthroughs). Conveying these things to the player with visual cues would've been the best.

Powerups look largely the same, and it's hard to discern which do what. I still don't know what most of them do.

All in all, Super Pantito is highly replayable and addictive. Deaths motivate you to continue, although part of me wishes the game was less sadistic in sending you back to the start of the game every time you died and instead plonking you down at the beginning of each level (it would've been nice!). However, maybe I'm just part of the privileged post-Nintendo generation that expects easy gameplay experiences to be handed to me on a silver platter, and with a silver spoon to shove into my privileged mouth. Perhaps if a sequel included worlds in sets of 3 levels, and if you died you would restart at the beginning of that world, it would make a great model for a larger scale game. And a sequel I should like (please!).

I give the super solid Super Pantito a fantastic 4.5/5.