I’ve heard Cornwall is quite lovely this time of year. Still cool enough for a fresh pastie, warm enough to have fish and chips by the beach. Shame about all the mutant fish people that are hungry for death! Ah, no, sorry, I think I’ve gotten myself too enveloped within BRINE, a fast and heavy footed boomer shooter where you play as an angry fisherman who must defend the strange country from “crustacean cultists and piscine horrors.”

I will say out the gate that BRINE isn’t pushing the boat out (pun obviously intended) when it comes to mechanical boldness. You point, you shoot, you kick down doors or exploding barrels into fish folk, it does everything you more or less expect a boomer shooter to do. The slight twist, which isn’t novel, is that your guns have two modes of shooting depending on whether you left or right click.

I’m not fussed about the simplicity, however, because it’s exactly as tight as it needs to be. The blend of 2D and 3D graphics allows for some fun spatial design that keeps you on your toes, but makes enemies particularly readable thanks to how different they feel from the environments. And the shooting is nice and responsive and crunchy, really putting the boom in boomer. I particularly like the underwater segments that allow you to fly up from underneath the sea for a surprise attack.

Beyond that, the vibe is just right, and the vibe always comes above all else in my book. Cornish pasties, scones, and fish and chips litter the streets as health packs, silly secrets hide beyond building windows, the music is dripping with the atmosphere of a YouTube comment section that can’t believe how funky a random song is from a late ’90s Mega Drive game about walking dogs, as positive as I can make that sound. Seriously, the OST is mostly the same thing over and over again, but I can’t get it out of my head, the tune (the tuna?) is a jam.

If you’d like to try BRINE out for yourself, you just need to head to the game’s itch.io page, but it will be coming to Steam in early access somewhere along the (fishing (sorry) line.