Fly Harder

Fly Harder is a multidirectional shooter developed by Starbyte Software and published by Krisalis Software. The game was originally released for the Amiga in 1993 and was ported to the Amiga CD32 in 1994.[1][2]

Fly Harder
Developer(s)Starbyte Software
Publisher(s)Krisalis Software, Starbyte Software (Germany)
Programmer(s)Ralf Wienand
Artist(s)Arno Seiler
Composer(s)Torsten Faßbender-Wellenrausch (Fassbender-Wellenrausch; Ensonique Projects)
Platform(s)Amiga
Amiga CD32
Release
Genre(s)Multidirectional shooter
Mode(s)Single-player

Plot

The evil Thargoid Empire is exploiting your homeland's precious limited resources by installing eight giant reactors in various caves and bases. Your mission is to enter the 8 areas and use the energy pods to cause the reactors to overload and thus malfunction.[3]

Gameplay
Fighting against airborne enemies and turrets in the 5th level of the game.

The gameplay of Fly Harder follows in the footsteps of gravity-based shoot 'em up games, like Gravitar and Thrust, where the player pilots a spaceship that is constantly subject to gravity and the craft's inertia. The players have to rotate the spaceship, thrust its engines and fire its weapons in order to shoot down enemies and navigate their way through the 8 stages of the game. The action takes place in free-directional scrolling areas that are presented in a side view. Each area features various types of airborne enemies as well as turrets which fire bullets at the ship. The ship is equipped with an energy shield and will explode if it sustains too much enemy damage. However, unlike most games at the time, the ship's energy shield will automatically recharge if no damage is sustained for a brief period. Losing a life causes all the enemy turrets to replenish, emphasizing the restart points and making things more maze-based and methodical. Scattered throughout the stages the players can find power ups (which enhance the ship's firepower), fuel canisters (which replenish the ship's fuel) and the energy pods that they must use in order to cause the reactors to overload. The players must use the ship's tractor beam to carefully guide the energy pods through the landscape and place them inside the reactors. Once enough pods have been placed inside, the reactor gets destroyed and the level ends.[4][5][6]

Reception

Fly Harder was met with generally positive reviews. Amiga Power awarded the game with a score of 90%, calling it the "Thrust of the 90s". Their review praised the game's methodical gameplay and graphics, but warned the players about its steep learning curve by noticing that "it's practically impossible to play for the first hour or so".[4] Amiga Format reached the same conclusion and gave the game a score of 87% arguing that "after the initial shock of crushing 40 times on the trot, Fly Harder becomes extremely addictive".[5] The One Amiga gave it 83% and felt that the high difficulty was "to compensate for the fact that there are only eight levels". However, they praised the high replayability of the game describing Fly Harder as "the kind of game that you will come back to time and again".[6]

gollark: Brains don't operate at infinite speed. I guess it depends on what you count as a gender change.
gollark: However³, yes, multiple personality weirdness also.
gollark: However², these people are moving through gender space over time. The question is whether they're doing so at discrete intervals or not.
gollark: However, there is a finite quantity of extant people. So only 7 billion genders as an upper bound can be used at once.
gollark: Would that be a BAD thing?

See also

References
  1. "Fly Harder". at HOL.
  2. "Fly Harder". at Lemon Amiga.
  3. "Fly Harder". at Mobygames.
  4. Amiga Power magazine, issue 36, page 71, Future Publishing, April 1994
  5. Amiga Format magazine, issue 57, page 60-61, Future Publishing, March 1994
  6. The One Amiga magazine, issue 67, page 52, EMAP, April 1994
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