Skies Over Meridell

The Meridell skies are abuzz with the ratta-tat-tat of dogfighting biplanes. Boy, those sure would have been useful when Darigan was attacking...Now it's time for you to join the fray and rise the ranks—or crash and burn trying!

How To Play

After your opponent has taunted you, you will be taken to the airfield. Your plane is the blue one on the right, opposite your opponent's plane on the left. Before you can start fighting, you need to take off.

Moving

The controls can be a little tricky to get the hang of, but if you are familiar with Ugga Smash they are quite similar. Your plane will propel itself forward without any player input, and cannot be slowed down or stopped.

Pressing the Right arrow key will turn your plane clockwise. As you gather speed on the runway, you'll want to press this key to pull your nosecone upwards and take off. Pressing the Left arrow key will turn your plane anti-clockwise. Don't press this while taking off, or you'll crash!

Left Arrow = Anticlockwise. Right Arrow = Clockwise

Once airborne, you'll use a combination of the arrow keys to level out your trajectory and navigate obstacles. The most important thing to remember is your plane has a wide turning circle, which you will need to account for when plotting your path. Begin your turn early so you have enough time to reach the angle you want before you need it, with time to make corrections.

Fighting

But this isn't just about flying, it's about fighting! Press the . (period) key to fire a stream of bullets along the same trajectory you are facing. You cannot be hit your own bullets. You have infinite ammo, but you can only have so many bullets on the screen at one time. Holding down the key will fire bullets until you have reached the maximum. Bullets will travel a short distance and then disappear, allowing you to fire more.

Both your plane and the enemy plane are destroyed in a single hit. You will need to begin the takeoff procedure again when you are shot down. You begin with three lives, and each of your opponents has a number of lives that increases with their difficulty.

Powerups

Kiko blimps will appear at random during your battles. These can be shot down by you and your opponent, revealing a random powerup. The blimps also drop their baskets, so be careful not to crash into them in your haste to grab the goodies! Collecting a powerup will earn you 5 points. Your opponent can also grab powerups before you get to them, but they will not receive the benefits of doing so.

Opponents

There are a total of ten rival pilots.

Scoring

You will receive 20 points each time you shoot down your opponent. Note that you will not receive any points if the opponent crashes into the ground or a blimp—it must be your bullet that hits them for points to be awarded. There are 105 total lives across the 10 opponents.

Defeating all ten opponents rewards you with a well-earned 200 point bonus.

You do not receive any points for shooting down Kiko blimps, but the powerups contained within them will add 5 points to your score.

Strategy

Don't fly too high—Kiko blimps appear from the top of the screen and move downwards to their final position, and you can crash into one unexpectedly if it spawns right on top of you!

Crossing the edge of the screen warps you to the other side. The opponent AI seems to be confused by this and will turn around to follow your new position rather than chase you across the edge, which can be helpful if they are on your tail.

Hitting the top of the screen will bounce you back downwards at a sharp angle, which is a much quicker way to change direction than rotating manually. Just watch out for blimps!

You might consider leaving your opponent alone during the early stages to allow more powerups to appear, making you stronger for later stages. However, this is rarely worth the time and effort as your early opponents will still crash of their own accord, robbing you of easy points, and the powerups do not have a significant enough effect to bring you in line with later opponents.

Early Game

From the second opponent onwards, enemy planes are far too quick for chasing them to be a viable strategy. There are two optimal approaches, which we'll call "Line" and "Spread".

• Line Attack: If your opponent is flying in a straight line, approach them perpendicular to their angle, and fire a line of bullets across their trajectory. The bullets are too densely packed to fly through, and the opponent will be unable to avoid a hit.
• Spread Attack: If your opponent is flying in circles, approach them from behind and fire your weapon while turning away in your own circle. Your spread of bullets will cover many areas of their trajectory likely resulting in a hit. If not, you will have turned away and fled long before they can counter attack.

Mid-Late Game

From around the fifth opponent, the enemy planes are too fast for the AI to reliably control, and they will start to behave erratically. It's very likely they will crash more frequently than you are able to shoot them down.

If you want to play it safe, you can simply try to stay out of their way until they crash all their lives away. You won't earn many points this way, but you can spend that time collecting powerups instead.

Otherwise, the only way to counter erratic play is to play erratic yourself. Line attacks are likely no longer going to work—your best bet is to keep performing Spread attacks and hope that the opponent eventually flies into one of them. Staying near the edge of the screen can help confuse the AI even more.

This game guide was written by: BB