The controls were listed on the game's full page, I didn't think about listing them here until I saw your comment Bakewell.
If you still are to try out the game they're below:

• Movement: WASD
• Shoot: J (Also Skip cut scenes and choose menu options.)
• Close: ESC

It looks amazing. Couldn't figure out how to start the game...don't know whether it's on my end or not.

Amazing, love the animations and graphics

awesome theme and art. questionable gameplay. if Gragthok was more agile with more varied kinds of might - maybe a dodge mechanic on directional double-taps or something? - and more planning to the enemy/world generation system, this could become a really fun game (also seems like no collision on most things that appear to be obstacles in the environment). great work so far, and thanks for sharing!

Man that intro art is killer. Really nice job on it. The game is fun too but, the intro art is amazing!!! =D

Really retro feel in this game! I included it in my compilation video series of the Low Rez Jam games, if you would like to take a look :)

Really loved the overblown theme set by the intro and the game's name, great art style. The game is quite challenging as well.

Great art and sound effects, they really captured the theme of the JAM.

The animated cut scenes were also very well executed.

The game is quite hard, specially with the enemies appearing from behind, which does somewhat remind me of games of this era.

Simple and really nice vertical Shooter, Fun, kinda tough and well done!
Reminded me the Amstrad CPC or C-64 games Era !

Thanks for playing guys,

As you mentioned axial_shift it is a tad bit hard and that comes from a lot of the randomness involved in how I spawn the enemies. I was in a bit of a rush when adding the health system so I didn't have time to display a health bar. And it's something I plan on expanding apon.

After releasing this I have beaten the first level a few times but it definitely takes some luck which I hope to make less of the case later on.

Really love the tone set by the intro and game over cutscene!

I wish the gameplay had slightly more punch but it's still a nice game. :)

Excellent stuff. Great looking enemies for such little sprites. Really challenging and keeps you on your toes. I really wanted to make it to the boss but couldn't quite get there.

I loved the "sampled speech" effect.

The intro animations and the menu systems were great. Overall, this had a great 8 bit feel and gave me real SEUCK retro feel.

Would be great to see this concept taken a little further. I wonder too if the player should be able to stop?

Will preface this by saying that I'm really bad at shmups, despite loving to make them and having one in-dev myself.

As soon as I saw the setting of the game I knew it was a must play solely for it and I was not disappointed - the cutscenes and the sound design are a very pleasing mix of cheesy and awesome, and more than I expected.

Anyway, I found this game to be rather very hard, but, I guess, that's just me being bad at such games. What would certainly help is some sort of a health bar - I do know it's not hard to just remember my health when I have only 3 health points (hope I got that right), but a visual indication is rarely a bad thing in such cases.

So far this game is aesthetics first, gameplay second, in my opinion, as the overall design felt far more fleshed out than the core gameplay, nevertheless, I had fun playing it and I hope you make something greater out of it!

Known Issues:

• Boss has 2 health rather than 10... forgot to change a value during my testing.