Dropzone
Fly a lander down through gravity and set it on the pad — too fast and you crash, and your fuel is running out. The capstone of Volume 1: a real-time physics game where velocity accumulates in a plain variable, thrust fights gravity, and one clean touchdown is the whole reward.
This is where Volume 1 comes together. In Rover you drove in real time; now the machine pushes back with physics. Dropzone is a lunar lander: gravity drags your craft down, thrust slows it, and you must set it gently on the pad before your fuel runs dry. The trick at its heart is risk and reward — every drop you don't brake saves fuel but builds speed, and the ground is unforgiving.
This is the volume's capstone, and it fuses everything the earlier games taught: the continuous loop (Rover), live input, the screen-and-colour surface (Skyline), and a readout you nurse like an instrument panel. The new idea is physics — velocity held in a plain variable that gravity grows every frame and thrust shrinks, the simplest simulation there is: two forces, one number.
What you'll build:
- A lander that falls down the screen on its own, in a continuous loop
- Gravity as an accumulating velocity — the fall speeds up over time
- Thrust that fights it, a key-press that shrinks the velocity
- A ground line and a coloured landing pad to aim for
- A touchdown test — soft enough is a landing, too fast is a crash
- Fuel that every burn spends, turning the descent into a squeeze
6 units. About 8–10 hours. This follows Rover and builds on Meet C64 BASIC. It's the last game of Volume 1 — finish it and you've built eight complete C64 games from scratch.
Unit roadmap
A lander that falls
A dot drops down the screen; gravity gives the fall real weight
Fighting gravity
Thrust pushes back against the fall, and a pad gives it a target
The landing
Soft or hard at touchdown, and fuel that turns the descent into a squeeze