I played the demo of
Xotic, and I'm not sure if it's good (shooters aren't my thing), but it was pretty interesting.
The premise is you're a sort of living Genesis Device, and you have to bounce around planets blowing seeds everywhere while destroying a cancerous fungus. All this serves to justify the core mechanic that you have to keep blowing stuff up or you lose. The fate of the galaxy depends on it, man! Spread them seeds.
What makes it weird is that mechanically it feels like
Quake or something, but there are barely any enemies. It's kind of like a competitive FPS stripped back into a very intense shooting gallery. You're not likely to die, rather the challenge comes from bouncing around levels like pinball, making big floaty jumps and trying to shoot a dozen tiny glowing targets while you sail-slash-plummet towards an even tinier floating platform. Then everything explodes.
The main game modes consist of:
Shoot things while they try to shoot you,
Shoot all the big glowing things,
Grab all the floating things, and
Shoot all the tiny exploding things without stopping.
I don't know. I get the feeling that it'd be great for someone who isn't me. Phylum, try it and tell me whether it's good or not.