How to play Lunar Panda (Like a Boss!)

Written by Adrian Killens on .

It's a been a few months since we released Lunar Panda and we've since had a bit of time to sit back and reflect on the feedback we've received. One aspect that we never really considered when we put the game out was that there are actually people out there that have never actually played Lunar Lander (the 70s arcade game that Lunar Panda is based on). Here at Gimpy Software we're a bunch of hardcore retro-gamers and we kind of took it for granted that everyone has our in-depth knowledge of the games of yesteryear.

This was particularly apparent when we put Dean's Lunar Panda arcade cabinet on display at Revival. People of a certain age got it straight away and were landing Mr Panda without any issues straight off the bat. However the younger gamers that had never heard of Lunar Lander seemed slightly confused at first and required a brief explanation of the game's objective.

So! For those of you who have never played Lunar Lander, here's how to play Lunar Panda!

Controls
Left - Rotate anti-clockwise
Right - Rotate clockwise
Space - Thrust

Objective
Land Mr Panda onto one of the landing pads. To do this both his little panda feet need to make contact with the landing pad and he needs to land gently whilst upright. You also need to keep in mind that he only has a finite amount of fuel, so thrust sparingly.

Scoring
Your end of level bonus is based on the type of landing pad you used and your remaining fuel.