Glorkian Warrior: Trials of Glork

I'm just going to call this game Glork.

There isn't much to really say about Glork, since it is ultimately a very simple game. You play as Glork, a three eyed "warrior" whose only skills are running around and carrying his super backpack. The super backpack is, however, a character in and of itself that talks. The super backpack fires without input from you, meaning unlike most shmups the game doesn't force you to hold down a button, which is sort of nice.

The game is a shmup in the sense very early games like space invaders were shmups, so I guess we can sort of call it that? When it comes to gameplay, the game isn't complicated. You run around while super backpack fires into very silly looking aliens that on the most part seem barely interested in your presence. You have about three screens to run across, and enemies can basically end up wherever in that space. Most of the game is firmly detached from interacting with you - enemies shoot missiles and fireballs, or spit flame, but very little of it seems directed at you - while you bob and weave trying to avoid attacks. You have a health bar with up to six hits, though most attacks take off 2, so you drop dead pretty damn quickly whenever things do manage to hit you. Healing is pretty rare, so cherish those 3 to 6 hits.

There are a range of enemies but they mostly just float around and make silly noises, and then there's a range of power ups. The game kinda suffers for the power up system, as the basic weapon takes several hits to kill just about everything but the power ups can be pretty bonkers at just sweeping the screen. Some of the power ups, but not all of them, are extended by eating "power crackers" that drop from enemies. So you run around collecting crackers, or more so, when you have a power up. I guess some of the power ups are more like power ups FOR power ups, and they also just happen to improve the basic gun albeit vaguely. Lastly, there are "boss" enemies, which are sort of grim for how grindingly slow they go down if you don't have a power up, but collapse like a house of waffles if you do. Fully powered up you completely destroy screens full of enemies in seconds, so the game's pacing can feel ... Weird I guess. The game has an unlock system but I'm not sure it really does much of anything. I mean you do unlock things, but mostly it barely changes the game.

Glork's main appeal is the silly writing and art style, coupled with goofy cutscenes that happen between games and other oddball bits. The music is also goofy and charming, and the whole presentation is more than the sum of its parts. It does a lot to make the game fun and pleasant even though it is actually kinda grueling and difficult in sections, and is basically just a primitive score attack game.

Anyway, outside of the cute art and the jokes, the game is a little lackluster. As I said, the moment where a boss spawns - which makes getting power ups obnoxiously hard - without a power up is just a big sigh as you grind away on it for quite a while, and you can end up with a lot of moments where there are two enemies on screen bobbing around without killing either of them for what feels like an eternity. I had a good two hours of fun out of the game, but exactly how I'm not quite sure. After a while it gets pretty dull, but for a game I honestly am not certain how I got or why I decided to play it, I certainly wasn't worse off for the experience.