Twin-stick shooters? Boring. Tower-defense games? Yawn. How about a twin-stick, tower-defense game? Knitted Pixels is banking the mash-up will yield peanut butter and jelly-like levels of awesomeness in Defenders of the Last Colony. You play as a group of ships that are protecting the colony from…some sort of opposing force (we’ll just assume it’s an army of ALFs that want to that want to steal the colony’s kittens).

While the story seems like it could be summed up on an index card, the really cool looking aspect of this 4-player cooperative shooter is that you can choose between two classes: the Soldier is adept at turning enemy ships into space debris, while the Engineer class can sit back and build turrets and other defensive units while warding the baddies away with pea shooters. There is also a relic system that allows you to upgrade the area your ship specializes in. Sadly, it will only feature local co-op only when it’s released later late this year/early next year on XBLIG and PC, but Knitted Pixels is planning on patching in online co-op at a later date.

Update: Yup, it’s last colony, not lost colony. It’s what we get for watching too much BSG. We suck sometimes.