LANDER

In praise of simplicity. A meditative space sim that doesn't make your laptop fans spin.

Ways to play

• Just kind of fly around.™ The most obvious way to play. Don't be too stressed about the score, just enjoy the physics.
• High score. Try to reach as high a score as possible.
• Time attack. Try to achieve the score of 50 in as short a time as possible.
• Efficiency. Try to reach the highest score possible with 20 trips.

Controls

• ↑ — main thrust
• ↓ — push down
• ← — rotate left
• → — rotate right
• A — push left
• D — push right
• SPACE — pause

Additionally

• F for fullscreen
• T to toggle dark mode
• M (when in menu) to open the radio station I recommend as background music

Alternative (left handed) controls

• W — main thrust
• S — push down
• A — push left
• D — push right
• Q — rotate left
• E — rotate right

Some practical notes

• This is a good laptop game. It's keyboard-only, and it doesn't drain battery or engage cooling fans.
• The game is designed so that you can come back to it after months of not playing. There are no advanced mechanics, only skill. Bookmark this page.

License

The two sounds in the game are free, CC-licensed. The rocket engine sound is CC BY 3.0 primeval_polypod, and the explosion is CC BY-NC 3.0 cydon.

This is a non-commercial project. If you see this on a page with ads, search for the original (Filip Hracek's LANDER) in your favorite search engine.

Game design

LANDER strives for a tight core game mechanic and almost no additional features. The goal is to have a game that you can play when you have 5 minutes, or 20 minutes, and have fun even months after you played it the last time. I avoided all artificial addictiveness (through things like variable rewards or cliff hangers) so that you can play and then stop without feeling bad about it.

LANDER is as hard as you make it. Play it as a meditative experience, without worrying about score at all, or play it competitively for high scores or time-to-reach-score.

Thanks for playing!

— Filip Hracek, filiph.net