Today, Finland-based developer Housemarque took to the PlayStation Blog to provide some new details on its upcoming twin-stick top-down shooter, Nex Machina, which is set to release on PS4 and PC sometime this summer.

More specifically Housemarque announced and detailed three new things: the season structure, challenges, and replay mode.

According to Housemarque, on top of the core game experience, such as standard arcade and level modes, it wanted to create a more competitive environment for its players to interact in. Thus, seasons were born. Seasons will last specific amount of time (weeks or months), and during each season you have the option to gain Ranks, Season Coins, and Experience Points, as well as simply compete against your friends on the leaderboards. Seasons also come with their own set of different challenges: what kind of challenges exactly, wasn't divulged.

Then there is Replay mode, which allows you to see other players' runs and learn what makes them awesome and so much better than you. Further, all leaderboard entires are recorded, which means it's possible to enter the leaderboards, select an entry, and watch the replay.

Lastly, the PlayStation Blog post also talks about challenges, to which the following blurb is provided :

Nex Machina has been structured so that all of the defining parameters of gameplay are listed in these so called game rules, which then will be mixed and matched to create slightly different game experiences.

One example is the game speed, which can be adjusted to be twice as fast to really test how long you can survive — or you could have a challenge with enemy revenge bullets meaning that all the enemies would start spawning those, adding a new layer of reactive gameplay.

You can check out and learn more about these features via the accompanying video below: