Even this early in development, Gun Jam looks ace. It's Thumper with guns. It's Doom Eternal played to the beat of its soundtrack. A metronome deathmatch. After a brief tease on Twitter lead to a collective response of "hell yeah!", Gun Jam has made the leap from concept to real, actual game - with devs Jaw Drop Games announcing their beat-blasting shooter earlier this week.

I covered (the game that would become) Gun Jam back in a Screenshot Saturday Sundays roundup two weeks back. How could I not? That weekend, I woke up to a twitter feed ablaze with heavy metal thumping and rhythmic blasting - the Quake meets Guitar Hero crossover nobody knew they wanted, but absolutely needed.

Sure, I could explain how this all works, but it's probably easier to let you see for yourself.

Verse❌Chorus❌Bridge✅- Rhythm FPS game ?#screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev #madeinunreal pic.twitter.com/2l84FXsSrV

— Dan Da Rocha (@DanDaRocha) April 25, 2020

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Those posts seem to have carried well enough that developers Jaw Drop Games - co-founded by Q.U.B.E creator Dan Da Rocha - reckon it's ready to push into full production, Steam listing and all. 'Course, Gun Jam is still in an early state. Screenshots still flaunt colour-tinted Unreal Engine placeholder characters charging haplessly towards the player.

What's there, though, has a promisingly strong look. Metal riffs that evoke Mick Gordon's hellish Doom soundtrack. Screenshots show a progression from old temples and snow-swept peaks through to clean dystopian cityscapes where music is forbidden. Key art suggests a future where Deadmaus takes on a new gig as one of Destiny 2's Guardians.

There's space still to define its own style, both in how it looks and how it sounds. But as I said back in ScreenSatSun, though, it's the potential of Gun Jam's rhythmic gunplay that I'm most excited by - how new weapons will kick against the soundscape, how foes could dodge and weave and react to their own tunes. There's so much promise for a proper brilliant wee shooter, here, and I'm pumped to see what happens next.

Rock Band controller support, unfortunately, has yet to be confirmed.