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Title Fly Harder
Game Type General Action
Company Starbyte
Players 1
HD Installable Yes
Compatibility All
Submission Adrian Simpson Profiled Reviewer

Review
Fly Harder, for those interested in the history of early games, is a
remake of Thrust. It is to Thrust what Stardust was to Asteroids, and as
anyone who has played either Stardust or Super Stardust will know, this is
a very good thing. It can be likened to other Amiga Thrust clones, such as
Zarathrusta and The Executioner, but is more recent. In case you are
unfamiliar with any of the above, the game involves flying a small craft
over a vertically and horizontally scrolling landscape, and negotiating the
various obstacles and enemies along the way.

The goal of Fly Harder is classically simple, but has some complications.
Essentially, you have to guide a metallic ball from its resting position
to a collection point. You do this by making your way in your spaceship to
one of the balls and flying over it - this has the effect of 'picking up'
the ball. It will now follow your ship until it crashes into a wall or
reaches the end point. Sounds simple? Well it's not, due to the force (not
the Star Wars one!) that they call gravity. Your ship will plummet to the
ground and crash, if inadequate thrust is applied. The ball also has
inertia and if you travel too fast, it will take a long time to stop and
most probably hit some solid surface. You have a shield on the ship and so
can hit the walls of levels a little, but it does drain very quickly.
Other methods of dying are running out of fuel and dropping to earth,
being shot at or crashing into the enemies that litter the levels.

If you haven't guessed by now, this is a very hard game. You need the
dexterity of a swashbuckling Errol Flynn to get very far in the game and
so using the joystick is not recommended. The keyboard is much better, and
luckily the game allows keys to be remapped. Key remapping is a feature
that is missing in most Amiga games - if Spectrum games could manage it,
then I think that most Amiga games should have been able to.

The graphics are excellent in Fly Harder and really add extra polish to
the game. While the detailed backgrounds add a lot of atmosphere to the
game world, your main sprite never gets lost in them.

This is one of those games with great graphics and yet superb gameplay.
The only drawback is that it can be quite challenging, so prepare to be
frustrated!