Space Junk

From Facundo Dominguez, an Uruguayan programmer who was also involved in infrastructure programming for Storytron, we get Space Junk, a very slick little physics-puzzler based where limited fuel, gravitational pulls, and patience are your primary resources. Your mission is to collect the vast amount of junk that has been left around the solar system, surely the side-effect of druken space rednecks driving their fusion-powered Ford space-trucks with reckless abandon, tossing beer cans out the airlock and supplementing asteroid belts with empty cigarette packs. You can pivot and fire off your rocket fuel to build velocity in a particular direction, Lunar Lander style.

At first the game seems underwhelming; a pretty good pixel splash of an avatar vessel gives you a solid anchor, but the asteroid navigation missions seem kind of shallow. Then the orbital missions roll along, and you realize that you haven´t had to think about geometry while playing a game in a long time. When you figure out that there´s a fast-forward button and that it´s essential to solving the more involved missions in a reasonable amount of time, then you might find yourself completely digging this fiesta of interplanetary debris.

Dominguez has posted a "Making Of" if you´re interested in his motivations behind the project.