Landing

A landing counts when the ship is sitting slow on a pad with both feet on the deck and stays that way for 0.4 s. The green ring around the ship (Settings → Landing ring) fills while that timer runs — lift off before it closes and the landing never happened.

• Both feet on the deck — each landing leg inside the pad and no more than 10 cm above it. A foot in the air or hanging over the edge doesn't count, and it also means the ship can't be tilted more than about 9°.
• Slow — under 1 m/s in every direction. A gentle skid on both feet still counts; pad friction stops it in well under a second anyway.
• Not turning — rotating slower than about 30°/s.
• Held for 0.4 s without a break — any condition failing for even a moment restarts the timer.

Landed crooked? Let go. The ship rocks onto both feet by itself within a second or two and the ring starts filling. Past about 25° of tilt it falls over instead.

A registered landing refuels and repairs the ship while it sits there, scores the pad on its first visit, and ticks it off on time trials.

Touchdown & damage

• Hitting anything at under 2.5 m/s is free.
• Between 2.5 and 6 m/s the hull takes damage in proportion — a 6 m/s scrape empties it.
• Harder than 6 m/s, or any scrape that empties the hull, destroys the ship.
• The velocity vector (Settings) shows your speed in green, amber or red by these thresholds.

Fuel

Full throttle empties the tank in about 28 s; steering burns a little too. Run dry and the run ends 2.5 s later — unless a pad catches you first. Pads refuel and repair the ship while it's landed.

Controls

• Touch (split controls, the default): a finger on the left half of the screen is the throttle — hold to burn. A finger on the right half is the attitude stick: push where the nose should point and the ship turns there. Turn split controls off in Settings for one-handed flight, where holding the stick also fires the engine.
• Keyboard: ↓ thrust, ← / → rotate, R restart, Esc menu.
• Gamepad: A / R2 / D-pad up thrust, left stick or D-pad to steer, Start or Y restart.

Levels

• Distance levels score how far from the start you get, in either direction. The gold flag marks the record.
• Time trials (a stopwatch icon) score the clock: visit every pad, or reach the finish pad, as fast as you can. Lowest time wins; a crash or an empty tank is a DNF.
• Sprints (an hourglass) give you 60 seconds — as far as you can before the horn.

Rulebook versions

Every run is stamped with the rulebook it was flown under — the vN tag on the high-score boards and the "flown on" badge on a replay. Old runs keep their old rules forever and replay exactly as recorded; the boards mix versions because the changes are small enough to compare.

• v1 — the original rules: a landing counted with the ship's centre over the pad (a foot could hang over the edge) after a 0.8 s hold, and a crooked touchdown could freeze mid-rock.
• v2 — the landing above: both feet on the deck, a 0.4 s hold, and the ship always rocks level by itself.
• v3 — the current rulebook: v2's rules on a newer physics engine. Same moon, same numbers; only the maths under the hood changed.

These are the rules of the current game version (v3). A replay from a newer rulebook than your game knows asks you to update before it can be watched.