Housemarque, the Finnish studio behind Resogun and later Returnal, considered Nex Machina their definitive arcade game. Released in 2017 and designed in collaboration with legendary arcade designer Eugene Jarvis, the game is a twin-stick shooter that distills the genre to its purest form. Levels are compact voxel arenas that shatter and explode around you as you dash through waves of enemies, rescue humans, and chase high scores. The whole campaign can be completed in under an hour, but that hour contains more carefully designed gameplay than most games spread across twenty.
The critical and community reception was stellar, though the game never found the commercial audience it deserved. Players who discovered Nex Machina became vocal advocates, praising it as one of the greatest twin-stick shooters ever made. The combination of voxel destruction, responsive controls, layered scoring, and difficulty that scales from accessible to brutal earned it a devoted following. The small player base is often cited as a tragedy of marketing rather than quality, a game too good to be this obscure.
Voxel Destruction and Arcade Perfection
The voxel-based environments give Nex Machina a visual identity that no other shooter matches. Everything in the world is made of tiny cubes, and everything can be destroyed. Enemies shatter into cascading particles. Walls crumble under sustained fire. Boss encounters end with spectacular voxel explosions that fill the screen with color. This destruction isn’t just visual flair; it affects gameplay by clearing sightlines and revealing hidden areas. The beauty of watching a level disintegrate around you while maintaining perfect aim and positioning never gets old.
The scoring system operates on multiple layers that only reveal their depth through repeated play. Surface-level scoring comes from killing enemies. Deeper scoring comes from rescuing all humans in a level, finding hidden ones, maintaining multipliers, collecting power-ups in optimal sequences, and clearing levels without dying. The gap between a casual playthrough score and an optimized run is enormous, and closing that gap requires understanding every level’s layout, enemy spawn pattern, and hidden secret. This depth transforms a short game into one with functionally infinite replay value.
Controls are precise to a degree that removes the controller as a variable entirely. Movement, shooting, and the dash ability all respond instantly, which means every death is your fault and every success is your achievement. The dash provides brief invincibility and a burst of speed, and mastering its timing is the skill that separates good players from great ones. Using it to phase through a wall of bullets, reposition behind an enemy cluster, and resume firing without missing a beat is the core skill loop, and it feels consistently incredible.
Brevity as Both Strength and Barrier
The campaign’s sub-one-hour runtime is its most polarizing feature. For arcade-minded players who understand that replayability is the point, the length is irrelevant because the real game begins after the first completion. For players who evaluate games by campaign length, finishing in under an hour can feel like the game ended before it started. The addition of multiple difficulty modes, each of which changes enemy patterns and density significantly, extends the experience substantially for those willing to push harder.
Local co-op is available, but the absence of online multiplayer limits the social experience. In 2017, this was already an unusual omission, and in subsequent years the lack of online play has become a more significant barrier. The game plays well with a couch co-op partner, but organizing local play is harder than dropping into an online session.
The power-up system adds variety between runs but doesn’t offer the kind of build-crafting depth that modern roguelites have trained players to expect. Weapons cycle through a set roster, and the secondary abilities provide useful tools without dramatically altering your approach. Players who need each run to feel mechanically unique will find the runs converge more than they diverge.
The Arcade Ideal
Nex Machina represents the purest expression of what arcade gaming can be in a modern context. It takes the fundamental principles of the genre, immediate action, clear rules, deep skill expression, escalating challenge, and executes them without compromise. The game doesn’t need a story, progression system, or live-service hooks because the gameplay is the reward. Playing better is the progression. Beating your own score is the endgame.
Housemarque’s design philosophy shines through every element. Level layouts guide you naturally while allowing skilled players to break the intended path. Enemy patterns telegraph clearly but demand quick reactions. Boss encounters escalate through distinct phases that each introduce new threats. Every design choice serves the goal of making the player feel skilled, challenged, and rewarded simultaneously.
Should You Play Nex Machina?
If you love arcade games, twin-stick shooters, or any game that rewards skill mastery, Nex Machina is essential. Score chasers will find one of the deepest scoring systems in the genre. Players who appreciate tight, focused design over sprawling content will find their ideal game here. Local co-op players should consider it a must-have.
Pass if you need lengthy campaigns or deep progression systems to stay engaged. Players who don’t find motivation in score optimization will exhaust the content quickly. If you prefer online multiplayer and don’t have local co-op partners, the single-player experience, while excellent, is the only option.
The Verdict on Nex Machina
Nex Machina is Housemarque’s masterpiece, a twin-stick shooter so tightly designed that every frame of every level feels intentional. The voxel destruction is gorgeous, the scoring system rewards depth of skill, and the difficulty curve from casual play to leaderboard chasing spans an enormous range. It’s short by modern standards, but the replayability through score optimization is nearly infinite. For players who value mechanical purity and arcade mastery, this is as good as the genre gets.