Silver Bullet’s aesthetic is dark, cartoony, and full of Halloween charm. But beneath its playful premise of a pint-sized Van Helsing rescuing puppies from the forces of darkness lies a razor-blade-stuffed apple - an arcade game with a wicked edge.

Mashing genres into something unique, its crosshair shooting setup is reminiscent of Cabal or Wild Guns, but eradicates ambiguous pseudo-3D trajectories by flattening everything onto a pure 2D plane. You trace your crosshair about the screen to gun down ghouls and dash to avoid bullets, while giant bosses - everything from fiery skeletons to undead dinosaurs - rain down fun and fearsome bullet hell-style patterns that are both inventive and thrilling to work through.

Helsing has a regularly refilled super attack that can be aimed and fired in a straight line, bleeding point icons as it wipes out enemies, and a close-encounters button-tap parry for expert use. His dash manoeuvre can also destroy enemies and certain obstacles, essential for tidying cluttered screens.

The goal is simple: don’t die and make your super shots count. Fine-tuned for scoring, each stage is plumbed with tricks to propel you up the leaderboards, with an accuracy meter that rises when hitting an object, multiplying your points, and falling when firing on dead air. A death, however, cuts this right down. Coins can be teased from each stage to be spent in a shop, doubling your super usage and improving accuracy, amongst other effects, implemented to incrementally improve your chances.

There are six stages and six interim, viciously creative bonus games that are frankly very tough to crack, borrowing ideas from Namco’s Point Blank and Capcom’s Pang, amongst others. There’s a challenging score attack mode and a novel Tetris shooting-hybrid called Terror Blocks to unlock, with a unique scoring system all its own.

If you don’t care about points, continues are freely available to get you through the game. At only 35 minutes in length, however, Silver Bullet shines brightest when you attempt a one-credit clear, and it's meticulously engineered around this. Extra lives appear at certain waypoints, and pocketing coins to rapidly empty the shop is a smart approach. Challenging though it is, the reward for success is all the more elating. This is owed largely to a clever arrangement that, once understood, keeps drawing you back for another go.

Yet, there are a few frustrations. It's occasionally difficult to discern which objects you can safely dash through, and positioning with walk or dash isn't entirely foolproof. Silver Bullet’s most prominent foible, though, is its control dilemma. Designed around a twin-stick setup - one for Helsing’s movement and the other for crosshair positioning - it's awkward to have button work restricted to the shoulders and triggers. Switching to traditional controls is far more comfortable, but then you can’t move the crosshair independently unless you’re firing at the same time. This negatively impacts your accuracy and, in turn, your scoring.

It’s not a colossal problem, and casual gamers will have a great time with its cleverly devised stages, but those aiming to play as intended face a tough choice: master the twin-stick controls or accept reduced scoring potential in favour of a more intuitive experience. It's a thorny choice, but regardless of how you choose to play, Silver Bullet is a bewitchingly fun little Halloween title that will have arcade enthusiasts howling at the moon.