The top 10 games of ‘Pitch us in one Tweet’ (#1: Sixty Second Shooter)

Shooters are one of the most basic forms of gameplay around, but not everyone likes them plain and simple and stripped down to their barest parts.

We like to dress them up in new ways, blending elements of different genres or setting them in complex worlds. But every now and then, it’s refreshing to just sit down and, well, shoot. The final game in our “Pitch us in one Tweet” countdown of under-loved indie games is one of these old-school shooters — accessible to pretty much anyone willing to spend a few minutes on a browser download.

The game: Sixty Second Shooter

Availability: Google Chrome (and soon as a deluxe version for PlayStation Mobile)

The pitch: @happionlabs: “A mouse-and-keyboard shooter with a 60-second time limit. You’ll be surprised how fun that is.”

Why I picked this: OK, now that’s a challenge I can accept. Jamie Fristrom, the founder of one-man developer Happion Laboratories, promised that his game could impress us in a single minute — that’s a big statement. Plus, the immediate mention of mouse-and-keyboard controls makes it sound easy to jump into. Will it be a shooter everyone can handle? I was curious to find out.

What is it? A timed shooter where you blow up as many geometrical enemies as you can, collect power-ups, and alter the flow of time as you go. Sixty seconds isn’t very long to reach a high score, so you need to make the most of what’s around you. Portals will drop you down a level to where there might be more enemies (cubes that break down into tiny versions of themselves or polygonal figures that chase after you, for example) or fresh items to grab and activate, like bombs, multipliers, and hourglasses that slow down time.

Is it good? It’s better than you’d think at first glance. Aiming for a top spot on a global leaderboard is always an addictive exercise, but Sixty Second Shooter takes a simple concept and delivers it in small, intense bites. You can come back at anytime and attempt to improve your performance, and you’ll want to. It’s fun looking at all the abstract shapes flying around your ship and trying to figure out how to use them in a way that’s going to boost your score to a new level.

And triggering dozens of mini and gigantic explosions when you get a chain going is … satisfying.

Look for it: In the Chrome Web Store now for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Macs, Chromebooks, and 64-bit Linux — or PlayStation Mobile later.

For more info: http://sixtysecondshooter.com

This is our last finalist in our “Pitch us in one Tweet” contest. You can follow this tag link to catch all of the top 10.