Planet Base is an arcade cosmic strategy game I built in Unity, taking the classic line-drawing mechanic (think Flight Control) and throwing it straight into the chaos of deep space.
Your job as flight director sounds simple: draw trajectories on screen to guide spaceships to their matching colored planets. But very quickly, orbits get crowded, timers start ticking down, and you’re juggling chaos across the entire cosmos!
The Twists That Make It Fun
Instead of just drawing safe loops around obstacles, I wanted to build real risk-versus-reward tension:
- Fuel Economy & Score Multipliers: Ships burn fuel with every inch they travel. If you draw overly long detours, they run dry and crash. But touch down on “empty fumes”, and you get massive bonus score multipliers!
- Auto-Launch Countdowns: Ships won’t wait on launchpads forever. If their countdown hits zero, they emergency auto-launch straight through your active traffic corridors.
- Space Rescues & Power-Ups: Scoop up drifting astronauts for bonus points, and snag shields, nitro boosts, or extra fuel canisters mid-flight.
- Garage Upgrades: Collect scrap bolts during runs to unlock new spaceships, upgrade engine speeds, expand fuel tanks, or shrink vessel hitboxes.
- Missions Mode: Beyond the endless survival Arcade mode, Missions mode tests your memory with tricky challenges, like drawing invisible flight paths where you have to visualize intersecting routes in your head.
Give It a Spin!
I really wanted to capture that addictive arcade sweet spot: pick up and play in seconds, but hard to master once the screen fills with crisscrossing flight paths.
Let me know your high score and what you think of the game!