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Intro Card
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Mission Control
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Build Your Rocket!
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Fly Your Rocket!
Inspiration
Build it. Fly it. Find out why it didn’t make orbit.
This year’s theme was deep space, so we gave players a rocket and the freedom to make questionable engineering decisions. Our favorite example: a bigger fuel tank gives you more fuel. It also gives your engine a bigger fuel tank to lift. Rocket science is full of these little betrayals.
What it does
Apogee takes you from your first 100 km climb to Earth orbit and lunar missions. In Rocket Lab, you can see how each part changes your mass, thrust, fuel, and budget before bolting it on. Then you take the controls yourself: throttle up, steer, stage, and watch the orbit display to see where all those excellent decisions are taking you.
During flight, Mission Control uses ElevenLabs-generated radio calls triggered by the simulator. It’s a very professional voice for whatever is happening in your cockpit. After First Flight or Orbital Challenge, the Gemini coach uses your actual flight data to explain what happened, show you the evidence, and suggest one thing to try next time.
How we built it
We built Apogee in Godot with GDScript. The rocket you assemble in the hangar is the rocket the simulator flies, questionable fuel tank and all. The cockpit instruments, mission objectives, radio calls, and debrief all read from the same simulation. We gave the star chart, Rocket Lab, and cockpit a shared visual style, because if you’re going to miss orbit, you might as well do it from a good-looking flight deck.
What challenged us and what we learned
The hardest part was making orbital mechanics readable while the player is busy flying. You can climb 100 km, feel pretty good about yourself, and still come straight back down. The orbit display made the missing ingredient visible: sideways speed.
We also learned how quickly feedback can sound more confident than the data. If you end an attempt early with fuel left, the coach can tell you that. It can’t tell you what you were thinking when you hit End. The debrief works best when it gives you one specific experiment for your next launch, which is a much better reason to hit Retry than sheer spite. Though spite works too.
