A small ship, a little fuel, a wobbly skyline drawn in lines, and three pads that pay more the narrower they are. Set down slow, straight and level. Pick the blue you grew up with.
Mood, both ways
The game keeps two numbers with you. Controlled burns and every hundred units of safe descent raise its energy. A crash lowers its calm. Time brings both back toward the dial you set. Four words name where it is.
- DAWN warming up. Cool colors, a slow major arpeggio, slightly wide pads.
- FLOW a run of good landings. Bright colors, the music opens up, a breath of wind.
- RUSH hot colors, raster bars in the border, a crosswind, and a narrow pad worth five.
- DRIFT after a crash. Gravity softens, the pads widen, the notes thin out.
Your side is the dial: CALM (unlimited fuel and a crash never ends the game); PLAY (three landers and a tank of 1200); RUSH (starts hot with a tank of 900). The game relaxes toward it. The mood tape from your session stays in this browser, and when you leave after a game, the game hands its mood to the town.
Two machines
ATARI 800XL (1983, POKEY). The Graphics 0 blue with a black border and light-blue lines. A raw filtered-noise roar and square-wave cues, in the POKEY spirit. A blue READY and a RUN before the skyline.
COMMODORE 64 (1982, SID). The blue field inside a light-blue border. A resonant filter on the roar and a sweep on every cue, in the SID spirit. 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE, then LOAD, then RUN.
Nothing is emulated and nothing is copied. The pixel font, the palettes and the mood model are shared with Breakwater; the physics, the skylines, the lander and the sounds were written for this page. Read the research note on Lunar Lander and its home-computer descendants.
The rules
Gravity pulls, the main engine pushes along the ship's axis, the side jets tilt it. A landing is safe when it is on a pad with both feet, falling slower than 24 units a second, drifting slower than 14, and within about 14 degrees of level. Pads: 30 wide pays 1×, 22 wide pays 2×, 14 wide pays 4×, 12 wide pays 5× (the last only in RUSH). Points are the multiplier times 50, plus 25 more for a truly soft touch, plus fuel left over ten. A landing refunds fuel by the multiplier and brings a new skyline. Three landers; a crash on CALM costs nothing.
Controls
- Touch: hold the middle of the field to burn, the left and right thirds to tilt.
- Keys: ↑ or Space burns, ← → or A D tilt, P pauses, F full screen, M sound, C scanlines, 1 and 2 switch machines, 3 turns the dial.
- FULL uses the Fullscreen API. iOS Safari has none for pages, so the stage fills the screen instead; add to Home Screen for the whole display.