Pros:
- Tons of evocative and nice 3D work
- Exciting music
- Fun theme idea
Cons:
- Balancing issues
- Very fast continue countdown
Here & There:
The neverending story was nightmare fuel for me when I was a kid, to the point where I've never bothered to give it a second chance because it creeped me the hell out so thoroughly. This game brought back some familiar if forgotten memories and feelings which was cool and I believe a testament to the accuracy of the 3D work. Some of the enemies feel too strong for how annoying they are, namely the bats which are relatively difficult to hit, fire projectiles at the player, spawn in bunches of 3-5, and take two shots to kill. I've never played space harrier and so it took me a while to get used to the aiming, but the crosshair isn't terribly useful because it doesn't convey the line of fire very well. The projectiles to dodge also don't have any shadows or anything that displays how close they are to the player and it results in a chaotic and blind-feeling experience where I'm just trying to stay as far away from most things as possible on the chance that I'll take a hit. When fighting the turtle-rock-boss-thing the PC moves up and down so much that it's rarely possible to dodge the shots from the side. My only real gripe is the continue countdown. I wish it wasn't there. I got a call which distracted me long enough to die, I picked up the phone and all of a sudden I'm on the title screen, having lost all my progress. As a kicker I believe I thought I was on the final boss when this happened, so at least it was as effective an accidental annoyance as possible. Some little tweaks that even out the challenge would be cool for a game like this, especially considering I only played on Normal. Like with other games in this jam, the idea of resetting the score on death is a bit too extreme in my books because it effectively nullifies everything prior to the death, and if you die near the end of the game then your score will be so low that it might not be worth finishing. Maybe a penalty of 50% each death would be better, I'm not sure.