The Earth Machine

Earth is ready to move on to another universe and the player needs to guide it through dangerous space. The problem are incoming asteroids which instantly end the journey when they hit Earth. The player controls our planet and need to move it out of the danger zones which are displayed by an optional laser grid which can be either have the colours green (safe), white (no threat detected), red (big impact incoming) and none (soon turns into red).

However, the laser grid only shows major threats; there are also smaller asteroids incoming which can appear everywhere. In contrast to the big impacts, those can be survived with the right tools: every time the Earth's moon is directly above the planet, the player can launch a satellite. When enough of them are around, they put up a protective shield which survives one minor impact. Alternatively the player can launch lasers which shoot down smaller threats, but those require satellites for power. The camera is positioned behind Earth (this means the asteroids enter from the back of the screen and move directly towards the player), but it does make automatic rotational movements (about 45 degrees left and right from the standard position) from time to time.