Rotate, thrust, and touch down softly on the flat landing pads — fuel is limited and gravity is patient.
Hold ◀ or ▶ to rotate. Hold ▲ to fire the main thruster (along the lander's nose). Set down gently on a green pad to score, then choose the next round or end the run. Crash = run over.
A touchdown only counts if both feet are over the same pad, a foot touches the ground first, the vertical speed (Vy) is 28 or less, the sideways speed (Vx) is 18 or less, and the lander is within about 11° of upright. A landing adds 100 points plus separate bonuses for a soft touchdown, little drift, an upright attitude, fuel left, how narrow the pad is and the round number — they add up, they don't multiply. All pads in a round have the same width.
Pads narrow from 152 px in round 1 to 50 px in round 7. From round 8 the tank also starts 4 units emptier every round (96, 92, 88 …). By the late 20s there isn't enough fuel left to brake even with perfect piloting, and in round 32 the tank is empty, so every run ends.
Read the velocity readout, not the visuals. The Vy number is what kills you — anything above 28 px/s on touchdown is a crash, and the readout turns red the moment you cross it. Train yourself to glance at Vy every second, not at how slow the lander looks. Visual speed is deceptive at high altitude.
Kill horizontal drift early. The lander's rotation rate is slow, so if you build up sideways velocity near the ground, you can't tilt enough to cancel it in time. Cancel Vx before descending: rotate to oppose drift, hold thrust briefly, level back to upright.
Approach high and slow, not low and fast. Burn most of your fuel killing altitude with the lander upright (just brakes against gravity). The closer you start to a hover, the easier the final touchdown — and the more bonus you bank for being upright.
Fuel is the lever, not the pad. Every pad in a round has the same width, set by the round number, so the pad bonus is fixed before you start — just pick whichever pad you can reach with the least burning. Each unit of fuel you keep is worth 1.5 points, and from round 8 the tank starts smaller every round, so wasting fuel on long hovers costs more and more the deeper you go.