Moon Bounce

Moon Bounce is a low-gravity platformer about the pleasure of hanging in the air. Your astronaut runs, jumps and floats down again far more slowly than feels reasonable, which turns every gap into something you have to aim rather than time. Three jet pips sit under your feet: a short tap fires one, shoving you up and forward for a moment, and they all come back the instant you touch ground again. That is the whole toolkit — a big floaty jump and a few small corrections — and the ten hand-made moons are built to make you use both.

The moon has opinions about your jump. Bouncy dust mounds fling you three times higher than you meant to go. Gravity bubbles hang in the gaps: the blue ones make you light and lazy, the orange ones drag you down fast, and both change the arc while you are inside them. Rocks drift on their own slow orbits, boulders roll the corridors, and space jellies bob along the route — walk into one and it stings, drop on one from above and it pops. Star crystals are scattered along every path, and they matter twice: they are your score, and each one puts a little air back in the tank that has been draining since you set off. Beacons along the way light as you pass, so a bad landing costs you a walk and nothing more.

The ten moons run from the gentle Landing Site to the long climb of Lander Ridge, and each one ends at a lander you step into with whatever air you have left. When you want something that does not end, the endless ascent generates shelf after shelf above a rising tide of dust that never stops — climb as far as you can, and your high score is kept in your browser for next time. It plays with arrows and the space bar on a desktop, and with a thumb pad and a jump button in portrait on a phone.