Weird, atmospheric Japanese shoot ’em up

Nanosmiles is a an unusual arena shoot ’em up. According to the intro, you have somehow been sucked into your microscope, and must battle your way through the tiny world you find yourself in.

Unlike most games of this genre, you don’t shoot. Only your helping drones shoot, you just direct them! On every level, you start alone, with a few drones lying dormant. Moving over them makes them follow you, so you can begin to clear the level of enemies.

The drones follow you around, and freeze when you press Z, which puts them into lock-on mode. Lock on mode puts a radar around you, and any enemy within this circle will be shot at by the drones. Using Z to freeze the drones position, you can be quite clever and destroy enemies while hidden behind walls. Th drones go to sleep if shot, so you have to reactivate them, and you die with one hit.

The graphics are simple but attractive, and there is a great variety of in game music to choose from. Control of your ship is via the cursor keys, which is OK although this type of game really works better with a joystick or gamepad.

The music and graphics make this quite an atmospheric, and relaxing shoot ’em up. Some people might find the gameplay repetitive, but if you like games like Geometry Wars, yuo’ll find something to enjoy with Nanosmiles.

Nanosmiles takes the arena shoot ’em up concept and innovates, which is worth playing for in itself.