Terrifying Rocket Zest

In December of 2018, Hindbodes decided to join a game jam for the third time in his life, and use the solo 48 hours to create one last game for the year, bringing it to a total of five. The theme for the event was "Sacrifices must be made". Somehow, though he wondered ever since then how he managed to pull that off in a future where he felt he could crunch less, he crunched well, and he got the game finished. But he had underestimated the amount of bugs it would contain by the time it was submitted...

Terrifying Rocket Zest is an action game where you must make liftoff with your crummy rocketship with a crew of 8 members and escape from the planetoid they are trapped on without sustaining too much damage to the vehicle, all the while having to deal with increasingly ineffective fuel by dumping crew members as necessary for any of them to make it out alive.

Here's a hint, since it seems unlikely for people to be able to figure this out just by experimenting: the spinning can be controlled properly, but it's only stable at times when your next propulsion burst is ready. The "Z" on the ship turns yellow when that is ready, as you'll probably find out very quickly.

Terrifying Rocket Zest has always been the author's hardest game up to that point. Unfortunately, it was also the most unfair. It came with a lot of bugs on its original, legitimate 48 hour version, and plenty of bugs survived in later versions, until now. The first version and the current 1.0.3 aren't too different, but 1.0.3 is way better. For history and for playability, this page will contain downloads for both. Version 1.0.1 was skipped to reach 1.0.2 early, but 1.0.2 fixed only less than enough. For some reason, it also used a logo for Rodent Predator, which would eventually become a problematic choice for the kind of scenario asked by this free 48-hour plus-updates game. That was "fixed" in 1.0.3.

1.0.3 was put together on June 19 and 20, 2021, and the development sessions came with a lot of realizations about just how "terrifying" the code is. It was decided that developing on TRZ to do what was felt needed any more was not right. 1.0.3 is officially titled now as The Give-Update, which means it's likely to be the last post-origin patch for Terrifying Rocket Zest that makes it better, because Hindbodes gives up. There was an idea to make a 1.1.0 patch to this game where it's possible to make the ship brake, and the turning control was better using a sensible idea that Hindbodes came up with a while ago now, but even that has been turned down as of this writing. Though TRZ might get a really big, revamped, serious game made out of the ideas and facets of it with an acronym more like GRZ, TRZ might just stay where it is. GRZ might come out, but don't hold your breath. You're not on the planetoid like old Throcko was.

Bugs Endemic to the Submission Version:
- Clock keeps counting up after you win.
- Crew member 5 has the wrong name. Huge faux pas.

Bugs Fixed Only Since The Give-Update:
- There being a way to ditch a passenger that makes the game call them "nil".
- Game application title shows wrong version number.
- The rocket's mass officially being known as zero according to the story.
- The stupid track in the menu going SILENT at points.
- Health bar occasionally has an inverse height flowing out of the HUD after the ship gets hit too hard.
- Hitting the launch platform by propelling straight down is an incorrect insta-kill.
- Unwanted white pixel layer.
- A lot of text alerts can overlap if seen at the same time.
- Euthanasia possible on maximum staleness even when you've escaped the planetoid.

Yeah, that's how hard it was.

This page was not the original publishing place of the game. This game was originally put online on Gamejolt at roughly 2018 December the 3rd 15:08:23 NZST and republished as what you see here later in time.