Touchdown
Land a spacecraft — gravity pulls, thrust fights it, fuel runs out, and the world keeps moving whether you act or not. The Volume 1 finale and your first real-time game.
Touchdown is a Lunar Lander. The spacecraft descends, gravity speeds it up, and you fire thrusters to slow it — but the fuel is finite. Land gently and you touch down; come in too fast and you crash.
This is the Volume 1 finale, and it is a different kind of game from the seven before it. Every one of those took turns — the program asked, then waited for you. Touchdown does not wait. Its world runs continuously: gravity adds to your speed on every pass of the loop whether you touch a key or not, and you thrust into that falling motion in real time. That shift, from turn-based to real-time, is the one genuinely new idea here — and it is the idea every action game is built on.
Everything you need to dress it is already yours: INKEY$ from Reflex, PRINT AT and colour
from Meet BASIC, BEEP, user-defined graphics from Hi-Lo. The new part is the loop that never
stops and the small physics running inside it.
What you will build:
- A continuous loop where gravity updates speed every tick — the real-time core
- Thrust that fights gravity, drawing on a finite tank of fuel
- A dashboard, and a landing judged on your speed at the ground
- A lander that moves — drawn at a computed position and animated without a trail
- Ambient feedback: the border colours by altitude, the fuel warns when it is low
- A custom spacecraft over a starfield, three real endings, and a play-again loop
- The design concept: descent — the world runs whether you act or not
8 units. About 6–8 hours. This builds on Meet BASIC — start there if you haven't.
Unit roadmap
The simulation
A continuous loop: gravity pulls, thrust fights it, fuel runs down
The game
A dashboard, a landing verdict, and a lander that moves
Feel and consequence
Ambient feedback, and three ways to land
The finished game
A real cockpit view, then the complete Touchdown