[2] The game uses fractal technology to create the craggy mountains of an alien planet,[3] where the visilibility was drastically reduced by the dense atmosphere.

The player controls a fictional "Valkyrie" space fighter[4]: 11  (converted for search and rescue duty) from a first-person view, attempting to land and pick up downed Ethercorps pilots.

Due to the varied terrain, the direction finder has to be used to locate the pilots, whose visual beacons are often masked by mountain ridges.

An exposed pilot's survival time outside his craft is less than a minute, due to his flight suit and helmet literally dissolving.

After landing within sufficient "walking" proximity to the pilot, the player shuts down the engine, also turning off the ship's shields.

[4]: 4  Turning on the engines prematurely would incinerate the exposed pilot and the shields would prevent him from entering the ship, however is required if the player wishes to defend themselves from attacking enemies while landed.

Failing to open the door kills the pilot; his knocking on the hatch becomes at first frantic, then slower and more feeble as he perishes in the corrosive environment.

[7] After landing near a downed pilot, the player watches him run off-screen, and then has to wait for several tense seconds—if it were human, the familiar, frantic "tap-tap" noise would be heard from the ship's hatch; otherwise, the alien Jaggi would suddenly jump back into view, sans helmet, roaring and trying to smash into the cockpit.

[9] The developers of Rescue on Fractalus wanted the game to be set in Star Wars universe but were not allowed to do so by George Lucas.

[18] On July 3, Warner Communications sold all assets of the Consumer Division of Atari, Inc. to Jack Tramiel, and the agreement with Lucasfilm fell through.

In 2004, an unfinished prototype was found in the possession of its original programmers, with a significant amount of gameplay elements not implemented.

[26] Commodore User thought the game was "nothing special" and said it "provides reasonable, if unchanging, gameplay with a good flight simulator, but it lacks something, probably a proper identity".

[30] By 1994, Factor 5 believed that the current generation of 3D consoles had the technology the Fractalus sequel required and again began work on the game.