Galaga On Sugary Breakfast Cereals: Glorkian Warrior

Glorkian Warrior: The Trials of Glork carries itself with confidence. Yeah, it's a take on Galaga where you can run and jump around, and? So what? It's also an energetic, colourful, and pleasant little thing set in a fun world that feels like a cartoon you've never seen before. Following a release on pocket telephones earlier this year, the collaboration between comic book artist James Kochalka and Dino Run developers Pixeljam arrived this week on Windows and Mac. I've paid my $3.99 (£2.50) to play it, so here, have a few thoughts to go with your news post.

It's Galaga, yeah, in that streams of alien ships swirl around the screen in formation and you have to blast them. The starting weapon is weak enough that it feels frustratingly slow at first, but then you get split lasers and swirly lasers and powerups and big swarms of enemies are exploding across the screen and you're jumping over enemies that move along the ground and basketballs are bouncing around and hey, it's pretty fun. But it feels like it should be faster, busier, noisier. The boss battles and meteor showers should come more frequently. It needs more pep, more zing. Persistent unlocks adding more stuff into the mix do help, but it's not quite enough.

Which is a shame, because its world is charming. Your hapless warrior is defending a planet from aliens while being menaced by two jelly sisters in battle suits, who bully him into completing challenges. The quick flashes of dialogue when you start games or die are fun. It's not hilarious, but it's funny, and that's fine. And it looks so pretty.

I think I agree with War Twat dev Rob Fearon, who I first saw mention this game: "It's nice, which is a weird thing to call a videogame but it's fitting." It is nice.