The game’s hook is that it is wholly co-operative: the two players can only destroy enemies of their own colour and are vulnerable to those of the opposite. Like Geometry Wars, it possesses an expansive bestiary of enemies – some foes make a bee-line straight for the player, others emit pulses of colour-coded shrapnel and yet more lay eggs which hatch if not swiftly destroyed.

There are some neat touches in the way that Schizoid is structured in order to crowbar weaker players through the campaign. The team’s ten lives are refreshed every seven levels, marking each new tier. When playing through a tier again, you automatically skip the levels in which you have already received a gold medal and you can also choose to grind away on a single stage until you’ve made the grade.

Yet, from the variables it juggles, Schizoid doesn’t often create challenges which demand thought – only co-ordination. There isn’t much in the way of coherent puzzle design, which would be perfectly acceptable but for the fact that the chaotic mosh into which most stages devolve is made a little drab by the sluggish navigation of your craft.

There is nothing of Geometry Wars’ split-second evasions here. A large and unwieldy target, you’re often no faster than the enemies you chase or hope to avoid. Collisions, too, sometimes feel imprecise. It is an underwhelming core around which to build the rest of the game.

Although improved by the knockabout joy that co-operative gaming always provides, Schizoid is fundamentally a little anaemic, lacking the kind of acute design which would either make its stages distinct or its basic operation continually engaging.

Verdict: 5/10