The game was polished and I ran into no bugs, in the vertical mode I got 9 points and in the horizontal mode I got 12.
I don't know how hard it would be but having the ship turn in the direction your moving would be pretty cool. (in horizontal mod)
Thank you for the nice comment. There is no build-in sprite rotation in Pico-8, but making the ship turn (or rotate) is absolutely possible.
However, I think part of the difficulty comes from the fact that the ship is rather large and clumsy target. EDIT: But maybe in "Space Race 2". :)
the sequel to the sequel
