Blast through a robot uprising
Nex Machina is a top-down twin-stick shooter from Housemarque, built around fast movement, dense bullet patterns and voxel destruction. You control a ship with one stick for movement and one for firing, cutting through machines across more than 100 levels spread over 6 worlds. The setting is a cablepunk future where humans have become glued to their portable devices and robots, having surpassed human intelligence, have decided to wipe them out. Your job is straightforward: destroy the evil robots and free the humans caught in the crossfire. Secret paths, hidden levels and rescue targets reward players who explore rather than just shoot everything in sight.
Play together on one screen
Local cooperative multiplayer lets you and a friend share the screen and split the enemy waves between you. The Steam feature Remote Play Together is available, so someone joining remotely can take part in the local session as well. Cooperation matters because the levels are packed with threats and the humans you need to free are scattered around the arena. Alongside co-op, the game leans heavily on competition: a deep scoring system, community and friend leaderboards, and unlockables tied to player profiles turn each run into a chance to beat your friends' high scores and their dreams of success.
What to expect before you start
This is an arcade shooter in the spirit of Robotron and Smash TV, so expect short, intense runs where positioning and reflexes decide everything. The difficulty tag is there for a reason — bullet hell patterns and aggressive enemies will punish sloppy movement. The roguelike and replay value tags point to repeated runs chasing better scores, secret content and unlocks rather than a single long campaign. Feats and achievements are tailored to the game's systems, giving you specific goals to chase once the basics click. The visuals use voxel-driven tech and signed distance field ray-tracing, so the arenas stay readable even when the screen fills with debris.