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Such Moon Launch — Rebuilding My First Game, Years Later

The expanded re-release of the very first game I ever wrote. 11 levels, 4 weapons, an endless mode, and proper tilt-to-steer controls. Wownero-themed pixel-art rocket arcade.

Such Moon Launch is now submitted to Google Play and the App Store, and live on the web. Apple and Play store listings will go live as the review queues clear.

The Backstory

This was the very first game I ever wrote. The original — Wownero Moon Launch — was a single-level rocket-landing prototype I shipped years ago as a fun side project. The we released a slightly upgraded version as a test app called "Meowlet Moon Launch" under our old Tabby Labs developer account. One level in the original and four levels in Tabby Labs version. Basic physics. No music. No juice. But it worked, and people played it.

It sat there, mostly forgotten, for a long time. Every once in a while I'd open the project and think there's something here. The core loop — gravity, fuel, an unforgiving landing, is one of the all-time classics, going back to the 1969 Lunar Lander mainframe game. Done right, it never gets old.

So we rebuilt it. And really gave it some juice.

What Changed

What started as a single-level prototype is now a full game:

  • 11 hand-tuned story levels across the solar system — Moon, Mars, Venus, Io, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, an asteroid belt, a rotating space station, and a Martian mothership boss fight
  • Procedural endless mode — escalating waves with random target planets, more enemies, tighter hazard timing
  • 8 ship upgrades — thrust, fuel capacity, fuel efficiency, shield, armor, landing gear, rotation speed, crypto magnet
  • 4 weapons — auto-aim cannon, homing missiles, continuous laser, area-effect EMP
  • 13 ship skins — 8 purchasable cosmetics plus 4 achievement unlocks
  • Tilt-to-steer controls on mobile, calibrated properly (no baseline drift, no "wait, which way is up" problem on phones)
  • 3D landing mini-game on final approach, with cockpit HUD, altimeter, and tilt indicator
  • Warp tunnel transitions between levels
  • Global leaderboards powered by our own backend at api.such.software
  • Cloud save — progress synced to our servers, restorable on any device
  • 13 achievements — Google Play Games on Android, Game Center on iOS
  • Crypto-themed collectibles — WOW, XMR, BTC, and DOGE pickups as in-game currency (no real cryptocurrency, no blockchain, no wallets — just pixel-art coins)
  • Cross-platform — Android, iOS, Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, all from a single Godot 4 codebase

Same rocket. Same Moon. Almost everything else is new.

Tilt Controls Done Right

If you've ever played a mobile tilt game and thought why does this fight me?, you're not imagining it. The mistake (as we learned) is tracking a moving baseline so the rest position can "drift" — but that same logic eats slow, intentional tilts before they ever register. Doodle Jump, Crossy Road, and Asphalt all use single-shot calibration plus a low-pass filter, never continuous baseline drift. So that's what we did:

  • Calibrate the player's neutral hold once at level start
  • Low-pass filter the raw gravity vector to kill 60 Hz jitter without losing slow tilts
  • Project onto a screen-relative axis (with the device locked to a single landscape orientation so the axis sign never flips)
  • Tight deadzone (~2°), proportional steering with a sensitivity curve

Result: you can tilt 5° from neutral and the rocket responds immediately. Hold 20° and it turns at a constant rate without the input being eaten. Try it.

Tech Stack

Built with Godot 4 in pure GDScript. Leaderboards and cloud save run on our own backend at api.such.software. Ads use AdMob on mobile and AdSense on web. There's an optional Remove Ads in-app purchase ($1.99 once, ad-free forever), plus two optional Moonrock packs if you want to skip the grind. Every upgrade can still be earned by playing — there are no IAP-gated levels. Desktop builds are always ad-free.

Get It

Such moon. Many crypto. Wow.