Project Pathogen

Project Pathogen is an interesting little platform game.  You play as a little square computer virus thing(?) and you have to make it to the end of the level, all the while killing other computer virus things(?).

Other than your super mega face pea shooter, you are armed with 3 weapons, a remote mine, a trampoline, and a teleporter.  You cycle through these things with "A" "S" and "D" while using the arrow keys to move, "C" to jump, and "X" to charge up and launch your weapons.  Now, I want you all to thing about this for a while.  Put your fingers on the keyboard as if you were about to play this game.  Now, record how long it takes for you to be able to perform the following actions:

-jump.

my guess is you had to think about what you were doing for at least a fraction of a second before you realized that "C" was the jump key and not "X," the one that, oh, I dunno, feels like a jump key.  And lo, herein lies the main problem of the game.  There are a million things happening on the screen at any given time.  I have neither the time nor the patience nor the health bar to have to think about what I do before I do it.

Other than that, the game is good.  The controls are solid, the music is catchy, and the mines behave pretty well.  If only the controls were more intuitive, this one would've been great.  I mean, it's tough for me to call any particular platformer "great" since its such a common genre, but I don't think anyone would deny the greatness of Megaman or Super Mario Bros.  The difference is that those games didn't make mistakes, and even when they did, they were minor enough to ignore.  Never once while playing Megaman (which this game was quite clearly influenced by) did I have to think about which button to press, and that game had like 13 different powers.  Project Pathogen only has 3.

That's all I got for today.  Until next time, stay intuitive.

Links
Proj-*cough* uh, Path *cough* gen *wheeze*: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25874

Project Mayhem

Can someone please explain to me what these "NOT REAL EXEs" are about?  I'm just so confused...

Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=600