ULTIMATE GUIDE Paradroid

It’s a shoot-’em-up, but it often discourages shooting. It’s an arcade-style game, but it requires as much strategising as reflexes. It’s a system exclusive, but there are numerous variations across various platforms. And for all its depth, it was designed in an evening, as creator Andrew Braybrook explains. “I’d likely had a ‘tough day at the office’, trying to come up with some sort of game scenario using cute robots in a hi-tech situation. I’d then given up,” Andrew says of rejecting the brief given to him by Graftgold founder Steve Turner. “I left Steve’s at 5pm as usual, and the old brain was still running at full steam. The release of the constraints of trying to merge cute and hi-tech just caused a torrent was there.”