The first time I saw this game was at my cousin's house, when I was very young. I remember seeing only a few scenes and considered it to be a very difficult game.
I imagined it to be Flashback until recently, when I found it again on Steam. =}
I didn´t play much the classic at that time, so I don´t have any pattern for comparison. My opinions are shaped exclusively by this recent experience. Just finished the game ... The game is short, but I played for short periods at a time. I probably finished the game in 3 or 4 sessions.

Boy .. This game is good ... Very good .. Overwhelming good! This is one of those games that, as soon as it finished, left me with a feeling of wanting to play it again! So Sad!! Few games have left me with this feeling that I can remember, FFVII, FFVIII, FFIX and Lunar 1 and 2
Why is it so good? Even for today standards? I'll try to explain why I felt like that:

No matter the graphics of this game, controls, gameplay, not even sound effects and music. It also doesn´t need modern strategies that appeal to the psychological and our brain mechanisms related to personal success, collecting, fulfillment of goals that can be visualized or are showed to us, power and influence, achievements, and so on.
It is able to provide a complete entertainment session by his own fantasy, game evolution, difficulty, possibility of imagination.

Adventure/Action/Platformer. A science fiction story that evolves quickly, by different scenarios, different intensities, so that the player, once immersed, must go throughout the story that doesn´t become boring. All the time unexpected and unconventional events are presented. Moreover, even with the primitive gameplay, dozens of different mechanics are explored, so the player will always be experimenting with something new and creative.

The only factor that can make you give up the game at that moment and come back later is the difficulty. The gameplay is based on learning to make movements absolutely accurate for that occasion. The player needs to learn how to deal with that "screen", which once mastered becomes easy. This learning actually becomes one more factor that makes the game enjoyable to progress, providing some value to those times of overcoming.
After the intensity of the final scenes, this overcoming of both the characters during the escape and the player after the countless deaths, will make you enjoy the game even more.
I would not know if it was intentional or not, but in every attempt, the player is constantly in tension to try to avoid the numerous fatalities, focused on doing everything perfectly as he has learned from the game itself, that this dosage is the right measure for the player not to be bored in the position of "observer" and to empathize to the drama of the characters and evolution of the story.

This game doesn´t have a single speech (other than Mycaruba!). But it's a book with visuals and sounds. It's an interactive movie with rewards for your determination. It's an old game, but if it had been released this year. It would remain great.
We need more of these short intense creative adventures with such great stories.