Black Hole Hazard Demo

Most puzzle games require you to stop and think about what you should be doing, which is why they are not as popular as shooters or other genres. However, they can also be a lot more fast-paced than that, at least as long as the developers are crafty enough to design the puzzles in such a way as to be understandable and solvable even at high speeds.

Black Hole Hazard is a puzzle game in which you have to use an edgy and sensitive propulsion system to navigate tricky environments and figure out how to survive the traps that lie ahead. It’s a mouse-only control scheme, so your full attention can be dedicated to the actual game instead of fighting the controls. On the other hand, it can become boring and repetitive as well, or at least the demo can.

There’s a story going on in the background as well, just to give you a sense of purpose throughout the levels. Thus, you play the role of Dr. Albert Armstrong, a researcher who’s involved in a catastrophic explosion at the Nuclear Research Center. After the explosion, Dr. Albert comes to his senses and realizes that he is in a different part of the universe and he must make his way home somehow.

The hardest part is learning how to properly control your character, because everything else is only difficult if you cannot make full use of the propulsion system. Hence, you move in bursts, and you can hold the mouse button to accelerate rapidly. In order to brake, you have to face the opposite direction and accelerate again, which may be a tad counterintuitive at first.

Thankfully, the mechanics seem to work flawlessly, at least when it comes to movement. Most of your time is spent trying to open locked areas by activating switches, or trying to avoid all sorts of enemies. Speaking of which, you also have a gun that can be used to shoot undesirables, but it can only fire a handful of bullets before it needs to reload, so you have to be very careful with every shot.

Black Hole Hazard has a few attributes that set it apart from the rest of the fast-paced puzzle games out there, but it’s not a groundbreaking design either. Hence, it can be fun for a few levels, but it can also cause a bit of boredom after you realize that most of the levels are more or less the same.