The pre-loader worked fine for me, not sure what the problem could have been.
It got kinda boring about halfway through, as progress seemed to grind to a halt - I won't count off any for that, as it's likely I was doing something terribly wrong.
All the references thrown in were nice, though (especially the yaranaika cloud) and there was enough overall variety to keep me entertained for an hour or so. Pretty good overall, though as you said, this style of game is indeed aging a bit.