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[ness io kain]

Hazardous Surface was originally prototyped during the most recent occurrence of TIGJam Midwest. I continued to work on it after the event, and now it's finished.
It's a little bit odd, so I'm not going to try explaining much of it.
It has astronauts.
And gelatinous monsters.
In space.

Things die.


...Mostly just you.




You should probably just visit this URL and try it for yourself.
This would also be a good opportunity to try the rest of my games, because I have gotten very little feedback on them. It would be particularly nice if people would submit ratings for !°µ1.53 and DTPZCC, because I'd like to have more than one opinion so that there is an actual average...

[3dpursuit]

Thoughts as I played.

Nice Icon
Nice Title Screen
The Graphics are nice, but the music is f***ing horrible.
Then. I had no clue what the hell I was supposed to do. I moved my lagging cursor thing around and one of my astronauts died. I couldnt figure out what to do so i quit.

[cactus]

I'm pretty much with 3dpursuit. I could get the character to move, but I didn't understand why there were four characters and I couldn't figure out how to jump. Some instructions would be helpful. I can't really say much more since I didn't figure out how to properly play the game

[ness io kain]

Did you guys miss the help file?
In-game instructions would have been preferable, of course, but this was a relatively quick project; I wanted to get it finished with as little time wasted as possible.
So, yeah... you should definitely look at "help.txt"; it will probably, umm... help.

You may also want to read "notes.txt"; hopefully it explains why the game is so loose and confusing. If nothing else, it at least admits that the game is indeed loose and confusing. 


Also:

Music is also very good. Fits the game nicely.

[...] but the music is f***ing horrible.

Quite a range of opinions there, and I haven't even gotten that many comments on this yet... Haha. I guess that's cool, though.

[Alec S.]

Alright, tried playing it.  First of all, I like the aesthetic.  Second, I like the idea of the game, but I don't think it's executed as well as it could be. 

First of all, switching between 4 characters is a challenge by itself, but the controls do not make it any easier.  First of all, I should be able to just cycle between them with a button press, rather than have to select them with a cursor.  And secondly, if I have to use a cursor, I should be able to move it diagonally without it freezing up.

Second, I don't know why low gravity would lead to slow movement.  And the slow movement speed made this game more frustrating.

I'd also implement some sort of way to fight back.  It's frustrating to be playing one character, and have another character get killed with little you can do about it.  It would be nice to be able to shoot the goo creatures off the other guys' heads or something.

The game has the makings of something fun, but you really need to make the controls much more smooth.  It's generally a bad sign when the player is fighting with the controls rather than the enemies in the game. 

[ness io kain]

First of all, I should be able to just cycle between them with a button press, rather than have to select them with a cursor.

That's a good idea. If I were to come back to this, I would probably try to implement that, but I'm working on something different now...
I actually made the cursor movement difficult on purpose in order to make the game more challenging, but it turns out that was pretty stupid, because:
A) The game is challenging enough as it is
and
B) Were that not the case, there were probably a hundred better ways to make it more challenging.
I guess I really don't have an excuse for things like this that I added in fairly quickly and never thought about again for the rest of the development process... 

However, I'm actually going to defend this choice:

I'd also implement some sort of way to fight back.  It's frustrating to be playing one character, and have another character get killed with little you can do about it.  It would be nice to be able to shoot the goo creatures off the other guys' heads or something.

Earlier in development, I had planned on adding combat elements, but the basic ideas of the game changed over time.
So, yes, there is actually a reason why you can't fight the monsters. I think combat might have ruined what this game is actually about, because it would have made the situation something other than completely hopeless.
This might make more sense if you've beaten the game, but doing that requires a lot of patience. It's also somewhat arbitrary, which will probably frustrate some people. (I don't care, though; I still think that was a good decision, too; it reinforces the game's point.)
As it is, the point is to switch between characters often enough that they remain shielded most of the time... But I admit that the controls make that pretty hard to do.

The game has the makings of something fun, but you really need to make the controls much more smooth.  It's generally a bad sign when the player is fighting with the controls rather than the enemies in the game. 

I understand... Maybe some day I will correct these things, but right now I'm trying to work on finishing something completely different that makes more sense and is a lot more accessible (hopefully easier to play, too).

Thanks for the feedback; I appreciate it!