• Morlan's shorts:

Fun shoot'em up without having to think much. Very much retro and it reminisces the 80s arcades although for some reason it doesn't look much like them.. yet it feels like it does! Odd huh?
Simple graphics, sounds, some music, it's alright maybe you switch it off after a few hours and the explosions aren't epileptic level flashy. But the screen can get hectic after a while. Nothing you can't clear with a saved bomb though. Shoot blast, get some score, unlock more ships, die from a random bullet that looked like a fuel pod but no worries.. just start again and repeat the circle. For short bursts that you want to clear you head.. the way of the blast!

Don't waste more time reading lengthy reviews.. time is of the essence!

• Morlan's shorts:

Every time I try to go back to this game, every couple of years, I forget how painfully slow it is and I walk away again. From the start: you have to wait for the unskippable "Welcome" note, every time you start the game for 20''! Did I say every time? Yes, EVERY TIME.. See how annoying it is to read it again? Well that's what the game does.. every time. Annoy you by wasting your time.
Walk through from left to right on the screen, takes about 5-6''+. It may sound fast, but given how small the area is, it's very slow.
When you die it takes another 4-5'' for the end to come and press continue/quit.
And it goes on..
I have asked the devs to make the opening credits skippable, at least if you've read them once and the reply was "it shouldn't take longer than 15''.." (it actually does, it's 19-20'') but WHY? Why must we waste time waiting for.. nothing? We're waste enough time in everyday chores that must be done, it's infuriating to have to waste more time, second by second tha accumulates by trying to have fun with a game!
I've used Cheat Engine to speed it up to 2-3X, and it's still slow to play..
I have no respect for games that don't respect the player's time. I don't think I'll ever play past the first 5-6 screens because of that.

Should've been called: "Alwa's Awaitening"

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• Morlan's shorts:

Having passed your I-am-not-an-epileptic test, you can play this game. It's an arcade game, based mostly on twitch reflexes but also on pattern memorising and it's basically very good at waking you up in the morning! Guide a poor little triangle (why poor? Don't know, feels like it..) out of a neverending maze that keeps spinning and changing directions and randomly changing pathways, by moving anti- or clockwise, while the maze keeps revolving. While you have to unlock each level by beating the previous, there's also an "arcade mode" where you can practice any level.
It's hard, maybe harder than it should, it's quite enjoyable but can also feel very rage-quitting and if you don't mind the upbeat, repeating, electronic-(techno)-style music, which I found very fitting to the gameplay, it's a fun game for short bursts.. Just don't overdo it or you'll be beating yourself up for.. not beating it.

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• Morlan's shorts:

An obvious homage to the ZX Spectrum era ..a borrowed, ahem, idea from "JetPac" (you could say rip-off, if in a bad mood) from 1983. It is basically the same gameplay where your jetman dude (choice for a dudette) is assembling his ship, collects fuel and lifts off. Added ideas: change extra weapons/add bombs/timer and a "newschool" mode that is an horizontal scroller (one way) where you still collect stuff etc but you constantly jetpack your way through baddies (same variety) and items.
Some issues need addressing:
1. First of all don't make speeded up videos for your game. It's deceiving, irritating to the eye and doesn't give the correct idea of what the gameplay looks like.
2. The flying is heavy, slowish/sluggish and the gravity too strong, compared to how the meanies are moving.
3. The hitbox is fairly large making it easy to get hit even if it feels you weren't that close.
4. The sound effects are rough and not very pleasing to the ear. In particular the "whang-whang" sound in the menu and the laser, and..
5. ..DROP THE CAPITALS people. What is up with capitalised game names? There's no point to "stand out" because half the games come out in CAPITALS.. it's ANNOYING.. STOP IT. (See what I did there? ). Not even angry, just making a point. And it isn't 80s style. They had small letters back then too. And yes there were also capitalized name games too, idiotic trends aren't a new thing.
6. Too high a price for the experience. Find it at 2 gold coins or less and it's alright..

..which is the reason I, not wholehearedly, recommend but I'm partial to the retro-game genre and I don't have a problem with "pixel-art" like some others..
Some fun to be had, more so if you're nostalgic about the era, but it's kind of a one-off. You come, you play, you go..

EDIT: I am changing the review to negative because of the translations. You NEED to use proper translators, i.e. people, to translate your game. Don't be lazy, cheap, because really bad machine translations are an insult to the languages. There may be others but least one language, namely Greek, is really an abomination of translation and an insult to the language. FIX IT and I will review and change my opinion accordingly.

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• Morlan's shorts:

This will be long..

Belongs in the list of most overrated/overhyped games of.. whenever. A prime example of the problem with "over-something" games.

As an application:
It's bad, appalling, it's worse than a spitter's vomit (got to play to get it). No sugarcoating it and calling it PC names, because it doesn't respect the.. PC player/user at all! Very ugly programming:
-Maximises the CPU/never idles. No background running for this game.
-Overrides any priority you set it at. You switch it to e.g. "Idle" and the moment you click the "window" (more on the quotes below), it switches itself back to whatever it wants. Again.. 100% CPU is a one-way slum-street unless you keep alt-tabbing and switching priority, have a coffee to cool the CPU down and get back to it.
-There is NO window! Windows have controls: Min/max/restore, all that stuff that comes with modern tech from the 80s! It's a borderless "placement", only an "X" to close it, no way to minimise it (it's an alternate spelling, with "s", deal with it) and not an easy way to move it because it locks your cursor inside the non-window, replaces it (of course, because we're past the time of "do you want default cursor") with it's own cursor, and you're practically in an "full-screen enclosure" that just doesn't fill the screen. This is NOT a window.
-Being a non-window, alt-tabbing makes it a chore because it occupies 100% of CPU so everything crawls to a halt!
-Random crashes when handling inventory. Couldn't figure out why.
If you are making PC games, first investigate the rules of the OS they're running on. A PC is not a console! This is a disgrace to programming for a 10-year old game. (The only worse contender I can think of are most of the LEGO games, which are themselves yet another crap application that doesn't respect PC-computing-window rules.)

Gameplay:

-The UI has many shortcomings. Your stash inventory can fill up with hundreds of weapons. They're by default sorted by "rarity" and then alphabetically and that's it. No filter, no sorting, no searching. You have rare-baseball bat, then some machete, then next rarity level you may have pipe, then machete, then sword, then another machete further down because it has a different first-name description. So you have to look through ALL of them to find the one whose name you can't recall.

-(Re)Spawing: Completely non-sensical placement when exiting/getting killed. You die at the bridge by a horde of zombies or fall from it (not in water) and it spawns you exactly in the zombie horde, ready to repeat the killing (yours) cycle again..
Spawning in front of enemies should be a bannable offence.. for devs! As if it isn't enough frustration that you died, lost thousands of XP, now you're agitated, to say the least, and as a reward/soothing.. you get to relive the nightmare right the moment after!
You exit at a safehouse, start the game again, you come back, now you're at the "Tower" (main storyline building) or wherever the game wants you to be, but not in the safehouse. In co-op you may both respawn at different places after you die in the SAME SPOT. Or not.. it's random.
You have an active "challenge" quest, and you just spawned at the NPC spot who is now in the new area, which you hadn't discovered yet! The area is open but I hadn't discovered where the NPC's new spot was, yet here I am.. Although I exited at the other area, i.e. Slums. Crazy? No, you're crazy!

-Some enemies are way too aggravating for the player, namely the "virals", who are randomly (supposedly when you make loud noises, but.. well no, I won't get into that, let's say that isn't entirely true) spawn "screamers" that lurch at you and have a huge hitbox on you!, i.e. they can reach you from far further than you reach them even with a rake which has, supposedly, ..huge reach! Nop, they can hit you from just about anywhere near you. These are just one example.

-Co-op play: I don't think the developers understand what "co-operation" means, which is what "co-op" stands for. It is not a UK food retailer. Every 3-4 minutes there's a pop-up (can be disabled) for "COMPETITION". I don't bleeding want any competition when I play co-op with my friends, I want to help them, not beat them. You turn that off, fine.. BUT.. Later in storyline you have COMPULSORY competition, NOT avoidable, while trying to ..escape? The goal is to beat your partner to the finish and let them die behind or come second? What the F is that all about? It practically pushes you into competition at every other corner. More insult to the player.
You find requisition packages, in co-op.. and it's winner takes all! Why are you both rewarded with same relief packages, but req packs are for whoever gets first? It's supposed to be co-operation!

-Climbing: All the typical tropes/issues are present. You hook the grapple just below the "spot" on a balcony/railing, can't climb up now ..makes you fall. You can hook the rocks but can't climb them ..you fall. Climb on the pipeline with visible railing next to it, but it's not "meant" to be climbed, which you don't know yet, so you jump and guess what.. you fall! 100m down. You died, again ..lost XP, of course.. You can climb on balconies but not on the VERY visibly "climb-able" rock above you because it's not "meant" to be climbed? What nonsense parkour-ing is that?

-Ammo: You can carry a specific amount of each type. Ammo doesn't take up space in inventory, per se, so no matter how many ammo types you have, you don't lose slots from items.. BUT.. you have, say 180xRifle ammo? That's it! Can't carry more of that, even if you drop the other type of ammo.

-You can dismantle just about anything.. but the firearms? because? Also shields are apparently magic because they cannot be dismantled.

-CHALLENGES ARE BUGGED!: You're not supposed to lose XP when dying while on challenge, but it happens, randomly, you lose thousands of XP!.. now you rage quit!

..and finally.. storyline..

No need to get into many details, but suffice to say there are many occasions where you will be questioning a) the character's intelligence, b) the writers' thoughts behind it, c) your own sanity.. in that order.
You're telling a story but don't make it SO unbelievable at times.
Example:
-You're standing literally next (2-3 meters) to an NPC from storyline andyou're calling your HQ to give them intel which the NPC is not supposed to hear because you're an undercover agent!
-You're bitten at the very beginning (not a spoiler, it's literally the start of the game) but you're living for days in-game yet.. when an NPCfrom storyline is bitten later, he turns almost immediatelyjust to make the scenario move on.
-At other point, you character gets very agitated about an NPC's potential actions.. even though he has no idea about why those actions are potentially bad, because his mission doesn't reveal to him what consequences the retrieval of some object may bring...i.e. he's in the dark.. yet he protests vividly as if he knows.
Many others like that which break immersion and.. suspension of disbelief must become an olympic trampoline to make it work.

An enjoyable game? Yes and no. Played storyline co-op, two people. Had fun because it's fun to play with another friend/partner/sibling and make fun of the game. The action is generally good, but there are so many "downsides" which make you go: Why? Why you waste my time with this? Why do you not respect the player's time?

For mindless, endless zombie carnage go for it.. probably why people think it's "a cool game".
But if you want a solid gameplay experience, storyline, sensical co-op, not too many frustrating rage-quite moments.. look elsewhere..

Don't waste more time reading lengthy reviews (you read this though).. time is of the essence!

• Morlan's shorts:

This is your typical, by now, "sideways" recommendation. If you're looking for a short movie-style, type of "adventure" game, reading a lot of dialogues, many of which don't make much sense or are useful/funny/informative in any way but are basically ramblings of a (weird)Edgar fella.. and also like not having to make an effort but just walk through a game (back and forth repetitively) to uncover the story.. Go for it!.. but at a great discount.
There isn't much action (but in the last stage). There is just going to person A fetch/read/talk and return to person B.
The art is lovely, the music is cute/uplifting and enjoyable. But those are the good parts. It doesn't justify the high price of 8 doubloons for 3+ hours of "gameplay" for what is basically a short film.
Also, extra points reducted for some obsene achievements that would artificially prolong the game: Harvest 10/50/100/500 squashes?? You barely need 1 or 2 to progress the game and there is absolutely no reason to harvest anymore. This is just a ridiculous afterthought ..without any thought behind it. It would take a lot of hours to do that, by just clicking again and again at the squashes. More hours than to finish the game. Why do you do that? Just remove them and make it decent.
It was fun, in a way, enjoyed many of it parts but I wouldn't recommend it as a game but as a short story, if you like all of the above.

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• Morlan's shorts:

Lovely haunting and at the same time cute platformer/puzze game. Beautiful, eerie and distinct art, if you can appreciate the style. The movement is of the precise-type not that floaty stuff, we don't like that. Controls are responsive. There's a nice background half-ambient music theme. The gameplay? Well.. it's a platformer, if you haven't played any, welcome to the world!
Buy it now.
..or you know, just add it, as it's free!

Don't waste more time reading lengthy reviews.. time is of the essence!

• Morlan's shorts:

Well.. now it has a launcher and you cannot..launch it, without the.. launcher!
So NO!
As if Mixed/Mostly Positive wasn't bad enough, you thought adding a launcher would help?
Just remove the launcher or make it work without it so we can play in peace.
No, it's not a review, I don't care, like they don't care about frustrating the customers.

Uninstalled for now.

Don't waste more time reading lengthy reviews.. time is of the essence!

• Morlan's shorts:

Making the player wait for 1-2 minutes for a non-skippable fade out even to start the game(!) is a total disrespect of the player's time. And then it happens again after the first "intro" stage. I had to use Cheat Engine to speed it up, and it was still too slow. Yeah the graphics may be a nice gesture to the 80s (the music is boringly repetitive though) but I just can't stand devs who don't respect the player's time. It's a loud NO.
Make these scenes skippable and we'll talk..
Even had to wait through the credits.. why you people do that? If I want the credits.. I'll go to watch the credits like 99% of the games out there. Have you not played any of them?


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• Morlan's shorts:

An enjoyable who-dunnit inside a dysfunctional obnoxious family. All members but the protagonist are unlikeable, on purpose. Impressively enough although it was shot on lockdown, the performances are good (..at being bad) and the editing convinces they are indeed gathered together and talking to each other. Plot isn't terribly original, it's a DOA poisoned case (not a spoiler, it's the first minutes of the game) but it's well thought out and after accepting the (purposeful) cringe, there are a few laughs to be had.
Main story can be short but needs replays (the hints/evidence is kept throughout plays) to figure it out and see all the solutions/endings. Bit pricey for the time, it's better to wait for a sale or a bundle..

Don't waste more time reading lengthy reviews.. time is of the essence!