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Hands-on with goofy bullet hell shooter Glorkian Warrior: Trials of Glork on iOS

Silly aliens

Hands-on with goofy bullet hell shooter Glorkian Warrior: Trials of Glork on iOS

"Time to synchronise our elbows!", the Glorkian Warrior suggests with a goofy smile. "Boss, I don't have elbows", his Super Backpack reminds him. The smile fades.

"We're doomed."

Glorkian Warrior: The Trials of Glork is a silly 2D shoot 'em up that skips and leaps on to your touchscreen with bubblegum pinks and sunshine yellows. It's lighthearted, quirky, and one of the most memorable shooters I've played in recent years.

It's set on the surface of a rampaging meteorite that has been claimed by a pair of alien girls in battle suits called Zoe and Chloe. They pop up occasionally, demanding Glork to do whatever they say. Otherwise they'll scream.

Glork and beans

Unfortunately, Glork's also got a duty to fill, and that involves shooting the invading aliens that tumble from the top of the screen. Zoe and Chloe prefer to give Glork "cute quests" to embark on, much to his dismay.

The aliens aren't your typical Space Invaders pixel bots, though they'll sometimes adopt their familiar line-based formation. Instead, you fight comically-drawn mouth-shaped spinners, angry zap-bugs, and massive heads that act as bosses.

You only have a couple of hearts to spare before dying. So avoiding the suicidal plunges of the invaders, as well as their bullet hell patterns, is essential.

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Picking up power-ups to increase the rate and power of fire is also preferable. You'll also want to look out for cans of alien juice that give you dual or triple fire, or twisty lasers, and many more weird weapons.

Progression isn't just found in survival, as you must also attempt to collect the shiny bits that dead aliens drop along the ground. Collecting enough of these automatically unlocks new environments, weapons, power-ups, and even exploding basketballs.

Every time you die and restart, you're treated to a dose of humour, and will then battle slightly harder waves of enemies than last time.

Glork amongst yourselves Glorkian Warrior is a thrilling shoot 'em up that throws delightful one-liners at you nearly as frequently as it chucks you into screen-filling bullet patterns. It'll be coming to iOS in the next couple of months.
Chris Priestman
Chris Priestman
Anything eccentric, macabre, or just plain weird, is what Chris is all about. He turns the spotlight on the games that fly under the radar.