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This is a vertical scrolling shoot-'em-up for one or two players that can be compared to Tyrian. "Ballern" is a German colloquialism for 'to shoot', so the title is a bilingual pun on the phrase "fire and forget". The game's story, sparsely related via mission briefings, hints at a military conflict between space faring factions (it is never made clear whether these are descendants of Earth's humans, aliens, or both), and the player takes on the role of a fighter pilot for the invading force that wants to conquer the mineral-rich planets of the Velanus system. They meet with heavy resistance from the natives, so the player's task is to carry out various offensive operations to bring their side to victory. The core gameplay has virtually no deviations from the genre's established formula: the player's ship files towards waves of enemies and must destroy as many as possible while dodging their fire. Destroying enemy targets yields credits which may be spent between missions to purchase shield and weapon upgrades, as well as additional equipment like scanners that detect cloaked ships and vehicles. The player's craft has several slots for different weapons (air-to-air, air-to-ground and both air and ground), which range from energy projectiles to various missiles, all fired simultaneously (but at a different rate) as the fire button is pressed. Additionally, some bonus items may be acquired during play by picking them up from destroyed enemies. A level typically ends with a battle against a boss enemy. The two-player mode omits the weapon purchase part and instead produces more frequent weapon upgrade pickups and other bonuses. The game uses 3D rendered stills for the mission briefing, shop and other screens, but all in-game objects, terrain and effects appear hand-drawn. It was marketed as shareware, with the unregistered version only including several levels from the full campaign. |
