Thank you for a really in-depth look at the player experience! Regarding the survivors' movement, I was kind of unsure what to have them do and as time grew short I settled on just having them try to get to the helipad unless the chopper was both landed and within a certain distance. But, yeah, the crowd of folks beating their heads against the helipad is a little silly. LOL
On the topic of tutorialisation, I agree completely. I had kind of thought about having an on-screen display with the various controls, that would either fade or be context sensitive, but again, that fell by the wayside as time grew short. Actually, now that you mention these points, I realize that the final controls/how-to stuff was put in during the last day of the jam, and I think the survivor pathing was the day before that. I burned a whole week of vacation from work to maximize my effort and I still had to cut and compromise. :-D
And don't worry about showing your age: A lot of the inspiration for this came from Choplifter, which I first played on an Apple IIc... In the 1980s.
Thank you again for the excellent feedback, and for giving the game a try!