In acid-bright office shooter Gossamer Matrix you have to reload while managing a deskful of junk

If I’m interpreting the press materials for Gossamer Matrix correctly, this is an FPS in which you might accidentally stuff a chocolate bar into your AK47 while trying to reload. The result will not be a fusillade of chocodrops. Instead, you will be gunned down like the miserable office slob you absolutely are. So keep your workspace tidy, chief.

I’m looking at my desk as I type these words. It contains: a piece of paper with “gel” written on it, purpose unknown; a stolen Cafe Nero mug, never cleaned; Vikram Chandra’s memoir Geek Sublime; and a bag of raisins. I do not own a gun, because this is the UK and one of the UK’s few advantages is that the vast majority of people don’t own guns, but if I did own a six-shooter and were lured into a gunfight right now, I guarantee I’d be stuffing raisins into the chamber while choking to death on my own bullets.

Which is hopefully the kind of doofiness that will make Gossamer Matrix fun. In this, gloriously non-widescreen and Haribo-coloured arcade shooter from catmilk, you are a security guard tasked with rescuing your company’s board members from the invading forces of Mallow Corp. To do this you must wrangle with a “physics-based interaction scheme” that obliges you to load guns by dragging bullets onto them and yanking at their bits. All the while managing a screenful of other stuff that has minimal ballistic potential.

It’s hard to get a clear sense of things in the absence of a demo, but the Steam page fills in the picture somewhat. “Things can quickly get overwhelming if you don’t take the time to keep your workspace clean,” it notes. “Empty magazines, candy wrappers, and dirty syringes will crowd your vision and obstruct your pockets if not disposed of properly, and being distracted on the clock is not a luxury you can afford.”

This looks and sounds like a hoot and a holler. I now consider games with dedicated reloading buttons desperately quaint. If you’re wondering where you’ve come across this before, it turns out Alice0 (RPS in peace) listed it as one of our most anticipated games of 2023. That was before I started at RPS, mind you, a period popularly known as the “Bozo’s Interval”, so I feel no shame about posting the game again.