Pteroglider Free

[DaveT]

Hi,
A recent commercial game just went free because of poor sales.
Try it out a see if it's really that bad...

http://codeminion.com/blogs/maciek/2008 ... sion-free/

[Udderdude]

The developers themselves seem to think it sucked, so I'm not exactly getting my hopes up. Will give it a try anyway ..

Edit: Ok, first impression .. can't get at higher difficulty levels w/o unlocking first.

You have a health bar that's pretty huge. Bullets take off one bar of health, but enemies crashing into you take off about half of it. I went the entire first level w/o even getting dinged, then the boss rammed into me and I died instantly. Apparently you only get one life, since as soon as that happened it showed the game over screen. Ugh.

First level was kinda meh .. same 2-3 garbage enemies appearing over and over. No real formation or pattern going on there. Since bullets do so little damage, you can play 'catch the bullet' and survive easily due to the huge health bar and constant health power-ups everywhere. Just don't let any enemies run into you ..

Also I guess I shouldn't even need to mention that your hit area is gigantic. And your ship slides around when you move. >_>

The mouse control+keyboard was a little odd but I got used to it. Others here will probabally balk at not being able to use a stick/pad.

Edit 2 : Ok, played through the entire thing on skill 1. As soon as I finished, it brought me to level 1, skill 2. No idea how many skill levels there are in total, but I didn't feel like playing through the whole thing again, especially seeing as I would have to unlock each skill level at a time. Unlockable difficulty modes are annoying .. :S

The levels did not even seem to climb in difficulty, in fact I felt level 1 was harder than level 4.

The music was pretty repetitive and generally felt like filler .. there was no boss music. When the boss appears, music does not change at all. Quite intimidating. :S

[Ghegs]

I too felt bored enough to play through the first difficulty level. I can't help but wonder where did the developers found these "hardcore players" who thought the game was too difficult. There are multiple lives, a life bar which you can easily refill and you even get invincibility quite often, during which you can just ram all the enemies without any worry.

I didn't have any problems with the keyboard+mouse combo, it was the non-existant level design and the inertia that made the game feel bad. Still, props to the developers for admitting where they went wrong and then offering the full game for all to see.

And at last, a protip: Never keep content/features that can make your game more fun to play as an unlockable. Have it out in the open right away.