Moon Lander
Fuel Is the Only Thing You Have
You are falling toward a landing pad with a fixed amount of fuel and an engine that only fires while it lasts. Touch down on the pad slowly enough and upright enough and you have landed; anything faster, or anywhere off the pad, is a crash, and one crash ends the game. Each landing brings a narrower pad, stronger gravity and less fuel.
Every Burn Is a Trade
Gravity pulls at a constant rate whatever you do. The engine pushes back, and what you are actually buying with fuel is a change in velocity. There is no way to buy that change back later and no way to store it - fuel spent early to arrest a fall is fuel you will not have at ten meters. Landing well means arriving with a small downward speed having spent as little as possible on the way. Real spacecraft budget entire missions in this same currency: every maneuver from launch to landing is priced as a change in velocity, and the fuel tank is the whole budget.
How to play
- Up or Space thrusts, left and right rotate the lander.
- Thrusting sideways costs fuel that does nothing about your descent rate.
- Start slowing earlier than feels necessary - the fall accelerates while you decide.
- Landing tilted breaks the craft even at a safe speed.
