Image: Studio Kerosene

One of the few non-spooky releases this week, Firestarters feels almost custom-engineered to grab my attention, personally. High-speed movement shooter combat on rocket skates, full of half-pipes, rail-grinds and big scoring. That, paired with a dramatic visual novel story about a team of women convicts fighting for pardons in a televised future death-sport tournament. All I could ask for is more, but that'll have to wait, as the early access launch today only includes the first of four planned episodes.

If that sounds a bit like the award-winning Rollerdrome, you're not far off. Although this one's first-person and much twitchier in its combat, feeling heavily geared towards precious mouse and keyboard precision shooting. Similar concept though, with big arenas filled with ramps, half-pipes and grind rails to bounce around on and get air-time. Each round, the arena fills with assorted killer robots and turrets, and you've got to clear them out before the timer runs out. Simple, but each enemy type has their own gimmick and they can be quite dangerous in the right combinations.

Stunts and kill combos mean higher scores, plus more bonus tokens to spend on upgrades before special rounds that limit what gear and moves you're allowed to use. Plus, ammo's very tight and there's no pickups. The only way to restock is to smash robots in the face with your baseball bat, which is very satisfying if you do it while boosting towards them or grinding on a rail. From the bit I've played, it helps to leave a couple grunt enemies around to provide bullets if you run out dealing with the bigger enemies. Plus, you can parry projectiles with your bat, which is just cool.

Interestingly there's almost as much narrative as action here. Between rounds of shooting, Team Firestarters (Protagonist Kera, and her support crew Match and Stryker - good theming) get dragged into the sketchy politics surrounding this future death-sport tournament.

Right off the (baseball) bat they're an interesting trio, with Kera being a hothead brawler, Match being a nervous engineer, medic and devoutly religious despite their grim situation, and Stryker being the tall Russian heart of the team, mangling english proverbs as she encourages the others.

It's a good way to add meat to an otherwise straightforward arcade shooter, and I look forward to seeing the rest of the story. Might be waiting a while though. Studio Kerosene (the developers) estimate another 18-24 months of development before this one's finished. But at least there's score attacks, leaderboards and endless modes to keep this one going past where the story runs out.

As a final note, the game store page proudly declares that there's no AI involved in its creation. It also does not endorse smoking, which is only cool when anime girls do it. The only extra note I'd add is that in the preview copy I was sent, the visual novel segments get wonky if you're playing in ultrawide resolutions, so until that gets patched, limit yourself to robo-smashing violence in 16:9 ratio.

Firestarters is out now for £7/$10, with the price planned to increase as more episodes are released.