Schizoid coming to XBLA in July

Microsoft is readying its first professionally XNA-developed Live Arcade game Schizoid for July.

This is the co-operative and abstract offering from Torpex Games that bears more than a passing resemblance to Geometry Wars, with an Ikaruga-style twist.

You fly around in little spaceships and have to tackle hordes of either blue or orange enemy shapes, or craft, or whatever they are. But your ships are also blue and orange, and you can only destroy similarly-coloured enemies, although you have no guns - you need to crash into them instead.

Cue plenty of protective manoeuvring as you try to stop your friend blowing up.

There are power-ups to collect such as smart bombs and razor wire you can string between you and encircle batches of baddies with, but to activate them both you and your friend need to overlap at some point.

We're told there are around 100 levels to get the better of, as well as an infinite mode where you can fight for as long as you stay alive in pursuit of a high score. There's also a super tricky mode that has you control both ships with the two Xbox 360 controller sticks.

Co-op can be enjoyed on the same screen locally or over Live, and if you have nobody to turn to then the computer is always free and can stand in.

There's no word on the price just yet, but we expect it will cost 800 Microsoft Points (GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.60).

Pop over to our Schizoid gallery for some pictures.