The game contains other characters to interact with as well as a physics model with gravity, inertia, mass, explosions, shockwaves, water, earth, wind, and fire. Energy is required to power the weapons and jetpack system, and needs to be collected throughout the game. Finn cannot die: when he reaches a point near death he is automatically teleported to safe locations previously reached and designated by the player, and ultimately back to his orbiting spaceship: consequently in many cases it is still possible to complete the game.
A major feature to this game is the enormous and detailed world it offered for exploration. This is achieved by generating the majority of the caverns and tunnels from a compact but highly tuned pseudorandom process - recreating the same world from the same seed each time - augmented with a few custom-defined areas. This structure was explained in the plot as the crew of the Pericles having set up a base in a natural cave system, with Triax having his own base in caves deep below.
Exile's programming featured innovative routines like creature strategy code that knew about noises nearby, line-of-sight vision through the divaricate caves and tunnels, and enemy's memory of where the target was last seen, etc.
