Spacecraft

What it's like to play

Spacecraft is a three-lane runner inside a wireframe tunnel of the solar system. Your probe launches from the Moon and moves outward past Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the rest, with each new backdrop announced as you clear another stretch of track. Eight stops separate the Moon from open space.

Four probes sit in the shop: Sputnik free, Voyager 500 tokens, Pioneer 1,000, Cassini 2,500. Arrow keys steer, left and right swapping lanes, up jumping, down shrinking the hull from 0.7 to 0.5 scale for 40 frames. Space fires the booster for 75 frames. Shrinking slips you through red space junk; the booster shatters cyan asteroids. Big pink tokens work as magnets, widening the pickup box for 450 frames, which is how you sweep the small tokens hanging around a planet.

Levels are short missions rather than endless runs. The first asks for 75 tokens, every third asks for 50 per tier on a mission, and others send you to a named planet. Track speed starts at 0.08, rises to 0.13 under boost, and gains another 0.04 once you pass 15,000 distance. Touching junk, an asteroid or a hole in the floor ends the run immediately, leaving the HUD to report distance, tokens, asteroids destroyed and places visited.

Verdict: That one-hit death is the difficulty curve, and the touch layer is coarse: a swipe needs 15 pixels before it registers. The three lanes never widen either, so variety comes from what fills them rather than route choice. The gravity feel is genuine, though, missions are short, and the ship ladder gives a reason to keep flying.

Controls

Arrow keys steer and switch lanes, up jumps, down shrinks the hull, space boosts; on touch, swipe to steer and tap to boost.