Skies Over Meridell: Not About Flying in the Air

Welcome to Skies Over Meridell.

In the one-player game, you play as – in my own lovely words – a slow blue tractor-looking plane all throughout the levels of the game. But if you don’t have talent for this game, and you’d like to improve, then this is the guide for you.

But first, you might want to look at the game page for Skies Over Meridell, because it gives the reason why the game exists in the first place – “While the ordinary people of Meridell farm the fields, gather the crops in and otherwise lead a simple life, way above their heads something far from simple is taking place” – and it will give this guide a little sense and meaning to the reader.

Ready to know how to get on the high-score tables? Well, quite literally, you fly to your victory. Here’s how...

... WAIT!!! An important thing to know about this game is that this is NOT Battledome In The Air. Your only attack weapons are your cannons and your only defence is simply “flying out of the way” or “dodging.” And there aren’t any “hit points” to lose, only “lives.” And... well, I hope you can tell the difference.

I. ELEMENTS OF THE GAME

After your “3... 2... 1... GO!” show, you enter the enclosure and see the scene:

THE SKY: Come on! If this game was played on the muddy ground, then the game would be called “Grounds Under Meridell.”

THE SUN: Does absolutely nothing to how you play the game. Well, without the sun, everything would be in darkness, so I guess there’s a reason why the sun’s where it is.

THE TREES WITH FENCES: Those green-leaved trees certainly don’t do anything to your game, apart from making it a pretty sight. Well, it would look a bit boring without a bit of scenery, wouldn’t it?

THE CLOUDS: White fluffy clouds can interfere your game and how you play, as your opponent could fly behind them so you can’t see where they are. But these clouds move – they don’t stay still – from left to right or right to left, so, with a bit of practise, these clouds would mean nothing to you.

THE GROUND: At the start of each level, you will take off from the right side of the red house. That’s the good part of why the ground’s there. The bad part – the absolutely infuriating part – is that if you land head-first into the ground, then you’ll lose a life... and take off from the ground again. You can avoid collision, but that’s later on in this guide.

THE RED HOUSE: Collide with this and you’ll lose a life. Again, there are ways to avoid this happening. It also separates you and your opponent when you’re both taking off, just in case you want to fire cannons the second you advance to the next level.

Feel at home? Good! That’s just the scenery, right? Well, now you need to familiarise yourself with the game features!

In the top right-hand corner of the screen, you will see the lovely feature that allows you to turn on and off the sound of the game! So if the background music and/or game sounds annoy you for one reason or another, just press the crossed-out music quavers and you will be left in peace.

Along the bottom of the screen, from left to right, you will see: how many kills you have left before you win the level (very useful), how many lives you have left (you start off with three), and how many points you’ve scored in the game (very very VERY useful).

II. GETTING YOUR PLANE IN GEAR

Blue may not be your favourite colour, and you might compare the size of your plane to the opponents in the higher levels, but you can’t do anything about that.

You use your left and right arrow keys (to rotate left or right, depending on which way you want to fly), and the “m”, “,”, or “.” keys to fire. By personal choice, I use the “m” key, because it’s farther away from the arrow keys, so my hands don’t knock into each other, and so destroying my game.

An important thing to know is that your right arrow key is the key to let you take off the ground. Remember this and you won’t crash headfirst into the ground.

In the first level, your plane “abilities” are the same as your opponent Nealy Nose Bill’s. If you press and hold down your right arrow key at the VERY START OF THE GAME, then you will take off the ground at the same time as Bill. Speed, number and distance of cannons shot every time you fire and your “turnability” – in this guide, how quickly you can turn in a short amount of area – are the same as Bill’s. EVERYTHING’S the same – that is, until you pick up a Power Up (explained later).

Having the same plane abilities – and maybe better – than Bill in the first level can be and is good, as if you’ve had practice at this game, level one should be over and done with in a minute, give or take a few seconds. But as you get to level two, against Shotgun Saul, THAT is when your opponent’s plane abilities are better than yours. This is where the Power Ups come in handy – again, I’ll explain later.

You will notice that the higher the level you are, the more times you will need to defeat your opponent before you’re to the next level. So in the first level, you only have to do it twice. In the second, you have to do it three times. In the third, you have to defeat your opponent five times. Then fourth is eight times, fifth is ten times...

At the beginning of each level and after you lose a life, you will notice that your plane is flashing during your take-off, and for a few seconds when you’re in the air after takeoff, too. This basically means that you can’t kill yourself the second you’re in the air, which is useful when your opponent’s right behind you, firing cannons (but you might want to dodge out of the way even so). Same goes for your opponent.

III. FLYING INTO ACTION

A unique thing about Skies Over Meridell is that you can “fly off” the sky. Yep, that is a loose term, but let me explain: you fly right into the edge of the left side of the screen. You fly off, and at the same time, you fly in on the right side of the screen. How amazing is that? A quick shortcut to get your opponent, but... yes, there’s a downside... your opponent can do exactly the same.

There’s more to hitting your left/right arrow keys and your firing key(s). You need a really good eye on your opponent so you can tail them. Here’s how you “tail them”: all you’ve got to is get behind your opponent. Easy?

Er, no.

When your plane’s slower than a Slorg, you have to prod your plane in the right direction as soon as possible. So if you see your opponent dipping down, you do the same. It is highly recommended you tail them with a bunch of Power Ups, but you can do it with only one or two if you’re lucky.

You do NOT want to be in front of your opponent; that’ll mean that they’re tailing YOU, which is not what you want. If this happens, then just fly down, wait until your opponent is ahead of you a bit, and then fly back up and tail them.

You also need to know how to avoid collision. If you sense that you’re going to crash into a blimp, the ground or the house, hold down the arrow key of the direction you’re flying in and keep it that way until you’re safe. If you think you’re going to crash into your opponent, fly up or down and avoid their cannons.

III. POWERING UP YOUR PLANE

I’ve mentioned Power Ups, and now you’re probably thinking, “What in Neopia do you mean?” Well, I’m going to explain what I mean.

But, it’s logical to say HOW to get these “Power Ups.” I mean, they don’t just fall out of the sky, don’t they? Well, actually, they do. Every so often in the game, a parachute in the shape of a Kiko will drop and bob down, and suspend in midair until something – either you or your opponent’s cannon(s), or you or your opponent colliding with it – and then you will see the Power Up.

Now these are random. But whatever Power Up the Kiko blimp produces, it’s worth something:

FLASHING PLANE: You get an extra life!! How amazing is that? This one is very, very useful when you only have one life left. Or, if you’ve still got all three lives you started off with when you see this one, you can add it to your collection!

ONE CANNON: This increases your shot distance. Collect enough of these and you’d be able to shoot from one end of the screen to another. However, I don’t think this is pretty useful, though an excellent Power Up nevertheless, because of...

LOADS OF CANNONS: If long-shot distances aren’t enough, then this one will be: get this Power Up, and then you’ll be able to shoot more cannons than you did before!

PROPELLER: This one will increase your speed! Collect enough of these and then you’ll soon be as fast – or even, faster – than Shallow Manallow. Definitely useful in the higher levels.

Wait! To me, this is the hardest Power Up to get yourself, and I don’t know why. Here’s a strategy: fly DIRECTLY at the centre of the propeller. This might take a few turns, but it’s definitely a Power Up to get.

FLAT BOARD/WING/THING: Yep, I don’t know the “technical” name of this, but I hope from my description that it’s pretty obvious. This one will increase your turnability! Just as useful as the speed increase, in the higher levels, you’ll find that, if you turn, it would be in one HUGE (well, maybe not THAT huge) circle. With this Power Up, your turnability will be just as good as our old friend Manallow.

Oh, and of course, not ALL the Power Ups are about improving your gameplay... drum roll please...

YELLOW CIRCLE WITH WHITE BORDER: Yes! It’s the Power Up that only powers up one thing: your score! Ten points will be added to your score each time you pick up this beauty.

Each Power Up, with the obvious exception of the yellow circle, is worth five points.

In your one-player opponents, if they pick up a Power Up, it WON’T affect their gameplay. So if Manallow indeed picks up a million extra lives, the amount of times you’ll need to defeat him won’t increase.

A word from the wise: under the pain of losing one of your lives, DO NOT stop attacking your opponent with cannons JUST to get a Power Up, because you can lose lives this way, accidentally or otherwise. This will NOT give you a good feeling, I can tell you. Personal experiences show me that you could lose a life while trying to pick up the extra life.

IV. THE SCORING SYSTEM

Skies Over Meridell is one of the few games that does NOT have a minimum OR maximum amount of points you can score per level.

“What?? HOW??” you demand, as you know that every time you kill your opponent, you get twenty straight and easy points.

Well, I’ll tell you HOW.

Long-term experience shows me that opponents just LOVE colliding themselves into the red house and into Kiko blimps if they’re unlucky. From what I’ve seen, the opponents in the higher levels rarely collide with the ground. Yep, this is absolutely frustrating, but true.

Take our level one opponent, Nealy Nose Bill, for example. He could bash into the house two times, making YOU end the level with a score of 0. Well, maybe you could get lucky with a blimp... OK, well, what if you don’t?

Right, that’s the “minimum” part sorted out. I’ll tell you about the “maximum” part.

Let’s say you managed to shoot Bill with your cannons, thus making your level score a 40. During the time you’re flying in the air, any number of Kiko blimps could bob down, and you could get every single Power Up. Let’s say that you pick up five Power Ups, none of them being the yellow circle. This will make twenty-five additional points, thus making your level score a 65.

Random piece of trivia: it takes 400 points to get 1000NP when you send in your score, thanks to the 250:100NP ratio Skies Over Meridell has.

V. LOSING A LIFE – or the game for that matter

It might not be easy to get that extra life Power Up, but it’s definitely easy to lose lives!

The first and most obvious way of losing one of your precious lives is getting shot by your opponent. You have to be VERY careful. An easy but not totally foolproof way of avoiding this is “tailing” your opponent – see section III.

Another way of losing a life: collision. Colliding with your opponent means that you will BOTH have to take off from the ground again. Colliding with the red house will mean that you’ll have to start again. Colliding with – or, for this case, flying headfirst into – the ground will mean you’ll have to start again.

And, unfortunately you can collide with the Kiko blimps, too. Did you think it wasn’t possible? Well, it is. If you THINK you’re going to collide with these blimps, either fly out of the way IMMEDIATELY – and hope that you won’t lose a life – or start shooting cannons to pop the blimp before you fly into it.

It works for me if I fly under the blimp and get out of the way quickly.

After a blimp has been shot and the Power Up is revealed, you’ll have to avoid the falling basket. If it lands on you, that’s one life down. If it lands on your opponent, that’s ten points lost. If it lands on the ground... that’s good. Also, if a basket is still falling when you’ve won the level, and the basket is directly above you, do NOT press your spacebar until the basket has fallen off the screen and into the ground. If you do, then you could very well lose a life this way. In some cases, you could get that life back, but just to be safe, wait until the basket is gone.

Here’s another way to lose a life: getting shot by one of your own cannons. Yep, it’s happened to me once or twice! But it doesn’t happen that often, so you don’t need to worry... that is, unless you have a lot of speed and cannons.

VI. HELLO, HIGH SCORE!

Skies Over Meridell is one of those many games which require practice to achieve your wanted score. True, it could take ages. Or it could take ten extra lives to even get you in the top thirty. But ANYONE can do it!

If you can get fairly high scores, but you haven’t got a trophy for this game yet, I suggest you send in a score on the first day of each month – that’s when the high score tables are cleared – and hope that your score will stay where it is when the trophies (and neopoints!) are rewarded.

And in conclusion: remember, this is a game, so don’t take it THAT seriously! It’s a game of fun! Good luck. =)

I hope this guide helps you. If you have comments or questions, just send me a neomail. Thanks for reading!