Salvage / Lander

Gravity never negotiates.

Somewhere out past the shipping lanes, a colony transport came apart on re-entry. Its crew is scattered across 6,400 metres of unlit rock. You fly the recovery lander. Nobody else is coming.

Set down. Load up. Get them home.

Classic vector-graphics lunar landing physics, crossed with the rescue run. Stranded crew wave from the surface, and if you can put your struts down close enough without turning yourself into wreckage, they will sprint for the hatch. Fly them back to a base pad and get paid per soul, with a bonus that climbs the more you carry in one trip. Greed is a strategy right up until it isn't.

Buy your way out of trouble.

Every base sells hardware, and it stays with you across contracts:

• THRUSTER for heavier lifts and faster arrests
• FUEL CELL for longer sorties between bases
• RCS GYRO for sharper attitude control
• GEAR + HULL to survive touchdowns you have no business surviving
• CREW BAY for more couches, more payout
• TRACTOR to lift crew aboard from farther out
• NAV PLOTTER to draw your ballistic arc before you commit to it
• ABLATIVE shielding that soaks impact and recharges at base

It escalates.

Clear a contract and the next zone gets more crew on the ground and more patrol drones in the air. Terrain is generated fresh every run, so no route is ever memorised.

Failure is a spectacle.

Hit hard enough and the lander does not simply vanish. It comes apart into tumbling vector fragments that bounce, spin, and settle grey on the rock, with the scorch mark burning itself into the terrain where you came down. Anyone you were carrying goes with it.

Controls

• Arrows or A/D to rotate
• Up, W, or Space for the main engine
• E to open the outfitter while landed on a base
• P to pause, R to abandon the run
• Touch supported: tap right for thrust, left side for rotation

Runs in the browser.

Descend under 18 m/s. Keep it upright. Bring them all back.