How to land gently in Moon Lander, Games by Zaweba

Landing a vector-drawn craft on jagged lunar hills, with not quite enough fuel, is the whole task in Moon Lander. You touch down gently, or you don't. It's an 8-bit game in the 64K home computer style, on the Retro arcade shelf of Games by Zaweba, and it's a game of small, careful adjustments rather than quick reactions.

Rotating and firing

Left and Right rotate the lander. Up or Space fires the engine. With the mouse, hold the button to fire, and the lander turns towards the pointer, which some people find a more direct way to steer than rotating with keys.

Fighting gravity

Gravity is always pulling you down. You rotate the lander and fire its engine to fight that pull. Pointing the lander upright and firing slows your fall, while tilting it before you fire pushes you sideways. Landing well is about balancing the two: get over a pad, take out your sideways drift, then come down slowly.

Short bursts of the engine give you finer control than long ones. A long burn can turn a gentle descent into a climb, and then you're spending fuel just to come back down.

Choosing a pad

You need to set the lander down on a flat pad, upright and slowly. Narrow pads score up to five times as much as wider ones. A wide pad is the safe choice; a narrow one is the rewarding one. Early on, take the wide pads and get a feel for the controls. Once your landings are consistent, start trying the narrow ones.

A perfect landing doubles the score and tops up your fuel, so the gentle, upright, unhurried landing is worth chasing on every pad, wide or narrow.

Fuel is the whole game

When the fuel runs out, the game is over. A crash costs 200 fuel, which is a heavy price, and every burst of the engine uses some too, so hovering and fiddling costs you. The game rewards landings that are efficient as well as soft: a clean approach, a short correction, and down.

That makes the perfect landing doubly useful, since the fuel it gives back extends the game. A run of good landings keeps you flying; a run of crashes ends things quickly.

Habits of a good pilot

Come in high and slow rather than fast and low, so you have time to correct. Line up over the pad before you descend, not on the way down. Make sure the lander is upright before touchdown, since a slight tilt at the last moment can spoil an otherwise good landing. And don't overcorrect: a small tilt is easier to fix than a big one, and a big swing one way usually needs another back.

Esc pauses, F11 fills the screen with the lunar hills, and the title card and F1 cover the controls. Games by Zaweba keeps your best score and plays on your PC, and shows your score next to your best when the fuel runs dry.

It's one of the calmer games on the retro shelf, and a good one to play slowly. Land on the wide pads first, keep upright and slow, and save fuel for the next landing.