A moon landing game with limited fuel

Moon Lander puts you in charge of a vector-drawn landing craft over jagged lunar hills with not quite enough fuel, and asks you to touch down gently. It's one of the original games on the Retro arcade shelf of Games by Zaweba, free and offline, drawn in an 8-bit home computer style.

It's a game of patience and small corrections, where the gentlest touch scores the most.

Flying the lander

Rotate the lander and fire its engine to fight the pull of gravity. With the keyboard, Left and Right rotate, and Up or Space fires the engine. With the mouse, hold the button to fire, and the lander turns towards the pointer.

Gravity never stops, so the engine is your only way to slow your fall. But every burst burns fuel, and fuel is the thing you run out of. Short bursts are the way to fly.

Landing on a pad

Set the lander down on a flat pad, upright and slowly. All three matter: land on a slope, at an angle or too fast and it's a crash. So the approach is about killing your speed before you reach the ground, and straightening up before you touch down.

Narrow pads score up to five times as much as wide ones, but they're harder to hit. A perfect landing doubles the score and tops up your fuel, which is the best reward of all, since fuel keeps the game going.

Fuel and crashes

A crash costs 200 fuel. When the fuel runs out, the game is over. So each landing is a balance: a wide pad is safe but scores little, a narrow pad scores a lot but risks a crash and a big loss of fuel.

A good way to start is to land on wide pads until you're comfortable, then try narrow ones when you have fuel to spare.

Habits that save fuel

Don't hover. Every moment spent holding still in the air burns fuel. Plan your descent, come down steadily, and slow down only near the end.

Keep the lander upright as much as you can. Turning wastes time, and a lander that's tilted pushes you sideways as well as up, which is hard to correct.

There's something calm about Moon Lander, even when the fuel is low. The craft drifts quietly over the hills, and the only sound is the engine you fire. It's a good game to play slowly, thinking about each landing, and very satisfying when a perfect landing tops your fuel back up and you can carry on for longer.

Opening Moon Lander

Moon Lander is on the Retro arcade shelf of Games by Zaweba. Press Ctrl+F and type lander to find it. The title card explains how to play, F1 explains it again, Esc pauses and F11 fills the screen. Your best score and plays sit on the tile in a scores file on your PC.

There are no adverts and no accounts, and nothing goes online. If you like the glowing vector look, Rock Blaster on the same shelf uses it for blasting space rocks.