Years in the making and still no less hotly anticipated, Dino Run developers Pixeljam have just showed off the video above of Glorkbot’s Mini Adventure, the smaller sister spin-off of the full Glorkian Warrior game they’re creating with local-favorite comic artist James ‘American Elf‘ Kochalka.

The low-bit Glorkbot was originally meant to merely be a power-up found in the fully hand-drawn & -animated Glorkian Warrior — a pocket-sized sidekick that’d go on pixelated side-quests in the main game (as in the original concept art above) — but, as the scale of the latter game grew, the team decided to give that side-quest setup its own full bonus game, to work toward a more easily grasped goal as they made enhancements to the 2D engine that’ll eventually power both.

Pixeljam are promising a full release of the spin-off game — which they describe as “the platforming of Sonic, the exploration and adventure of Metroid and the shooting action of Galaga rolled into a single enormous level” — for PC/Mac/Linux before the end of the year, with a potential iPad counterpart possibly coming shortly thereafter, tiding us over until the full magnum opus finds its way to the finish line.