Project: Rocket Launch

A shapeshifter is hiding in your crew, and the rocket will not launch itself.

It is 2113. The space station MISS has one rocket left, and the monster that stole the last one looks exactly like one of you. Carry fuel, food, water and batteries from the pods to the yard (there is no air out there), get enough of the crew onto the launch pad and press LAUNCH before the core overheats in twelve minutes. If you are the monster, make sure nobody does.

Play together on the same Wi-Fi: one player taps Host LAN game, the others tap Join LAN game and the room shows up by itself. Up to 8 players, bots fill every other seat and take over if someone drops out. Or play alone against bots. No account, no ads, no gold, free.

Which download do I need?

• Just want to try it? Press Run game at the top. It plays in your browser, alone against bots, with nothing to install.
• Windows PC: download Windows (PC): Project Rocket Launch 2.0, unzip it and run Project-Rocket-Launch.exe.
• Linux PC: download Linux (PC): Project Rocket Launch 2.0, unzip it, make the file executable and run it.
• Android phone or tablet: download Android (phone or tablet, APK): Project Rocket Launch 2.0 and install it.
• Playing together on the same Wi-Fi: everybody needs the game (2.0) on their own device, and the host has to be a PC (Windows or Linux).
• Rocket Server is optional and only for people who want to host a game around the clock on a spare computer. You do not need it to play.
• Anything marked OLD 2020 prototype is the canceled first version, kept for history. It is not the current game.

What's in it

• Oxygen and light. The air runs out in the yard and when the reactor is off, and you only see what your light reaches. A flashlight with a battery is your only weapon.
• The monster. It looks like crew until it chooses not to: it can turn into its monster form, bite, go invisible, and switch the reactor off so the lights and the air go out. A crew mate's flashlight beam on the monster stuns it and frees whoever it grabbed.
• Three missions: Moon (a short hop, good for learning), Mars (the real run), Europa (bring everyone). Pods regrow, so a round can never run out of supplies.
• Security cameras, hexagonal pods, a yard with a real rocket that really lifts off.
• Phone first. A thumb stick appears wherever you put your thumb, and one big button always does the most useful thing in reach (pick up, drop, plan, launch, repair, bite). Also keyboard and mouse. There is gamepad support in the game, but I have not been able to try one yet.
• Built for a potato. No realtime lights, no shadows, four quality levels picked for your device, and a frame-rate governor that lowers the picture before it lets the game stutter.
• Everything is generated by code: every model, shader, letter and sound. No third-party assets.

Playing across the internet, for free

The game has no server, so nothing costs anybody anything. For friends in other places, the Play together pages in the game (and the notes below) show the free ways to make "far apart" look like "same network":

• Tailscale or ZeroTier (a free virtual network): everyone installs the app, the host shares the machine or the network, the friends type the host's address.
• playit.gg (a free tunnel): the host runs a small program, friends type the address it prints. Nothing for the friends to install.
• Port forwarding on your router (it only works if your internet connection has a real public address, the game explains how to check).
• A server that runs by itself on a spare PC or a Raspberry Pi: Rocket Server, a small separate download on this page (it needs the free .NET 9 runtime), reached through one of the above.

The game uses UDP port 47321. On Windows the first time you host, allow the game on Private networks in the firewall box. The browser version is solo only, because browsers cannot open game sockets; use the downloads to play together.

Then and now

The December 2020 version was a prototype I canceled. It had three networking systems tangled together, a LAN mode that "was not working all the time", online play through a matchmaking service that has since shut down, tank controls (D to go forward, W to turn left), a phone version where you had to tap a tiny cube, and it ran at 18 to 30 frames per second on a desktop. 2.0 keeps the idea (a hidden shapeshifter, oxygen and light, a real shared goal) and rebuilds everything else.

The original (2020)

All the December 2020 builds are still on this page as downloads, exactly as I uploaded them. They are unsupported, and the online part of them no longer works.

Good to know

• Windows, Linux and Android (APK, landscape) downloads, and the browser version. No Mac or iPhone version.
• The Android app only asks for the internet and Wi-Fi state (it needs the second one to find rooms on your network).
• Made with Unity 6. Made by Code Scrambler. Feedback is very welcome, the community board is open.