MDT Space Explorer

About MDT Space Explorer

Walk round the ship as your own Maximus World character: the cockpit with its glass canopy, the Command Deck and its holographic star map, the Observation Lounge and telescope, the Science Lab, the Crew Quarters, the cargo bay with its airlock and ramp, and Engineering with the reactor, the refinery and the fabricator. The goal is to master the solar system and beyond, all the way to a black hole.

How to play

1. Take the pilot's seat in the cockpit and launch from Earth. The ground drops away, you climb through the clouds and the sky turns black.
2. Pick where to go on the flight controls or the holographic star map on the Command Deck. Every trip uses fuel; bigger engines reach further worlds.
3. Land on planets and moons yourself: hold THRUST against the pull of gravity, steer over the landing pad and touch down gently, or press Autopilot.
4. Put a spacesuit on, walk down the ramp and explore: hold the dig button on glowing deposits for resources like ice, iron, titanium and platinum, and scan landmarks such as Apollo 11's lander and the Perseverance rover. Keep an eye on your oxygen.
5. Land at the ruined cities, Selene City on the Moon and the Ares Colony on Mars, and fight off the zombie robots that climb out of the dust with your suit blaster. Break enough of them and take the city's Core Crystal from the plaza in the middle to open the next city.
6. Back aboard, build upgrades at the fabricator from what you have found plus science, make fuel at the refinery, or sell your cargo for MXC at home.
7. Pin up to three goals and arrows lead you to the next step. Master a world by doing everything there, and the Logbook keeps every fact you find.
8. Every game is a run: start a new one any time (always on the launch pad at home), and Continue carries a run on from exactly where you left it. Signed in, pick friends for a run: they can join whenever it is being flown, or carry it on themselves. Everyone aboard is equal: anyone can fly the ship and land it.

What's in it

• Your own spaceship to walk round: seven rooms, sliding doors, a canopy, an airlock and a ramp, swept wings, five engines and six landing legs
• No set missions: go wherever you like and set your own goals
• 16 places, from the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars out past Pluto, then beyond the Sun to Proxima Centauri, TRAPPIST-1, the Orion Nebula, a pulsar and the black hole Cygnus X-1
• Land it yourself at 16 real places: Tranquility Base, Jezero Crater on Mars, a geyser field on Enceladus, the shore of a methane sea on Titan, Sputnik Planitia on Pluto and more, each with its own sky and ground
• Two ruined cities made up for the game, Selene City on the Moon and the Ares Colony on Mars: broken buildings, flickering signs and fires in the wrecks, zombie robots to fight with a suit blaster, and a Core Crystal to win in each
• A holographic star map of the solar system and the stars, and each world up close with its landing sites
• Ten resources to dig up or cut from asteroids with a mining laser, and eleven upgrades to build: six engines, bigger tanks, armour, thrusters, a bigger hold, spacesuits, drills, a heat shield for Venus and more
• Fuel, oxygen and a hull to look after: hard landings and meteor showers do damage, a refinery makes fuel, and a tow ship brings you home if you run dry
• Telescope targets, Lab samples, survey probes and landmarks with real, checked facts, all kept in the Logbook
• Random events in orbit: meteor showers, solar flares, faults and passing comets
• MD-2, a little droid who lives aboard: it follows you round, shows you the way and talks. Signed in, it is an AI you can ask anything about the ship and space; when its daily battery runs out it sleeps on its dock until midnight
• As many runs as you like, each saved exactly where you left it
• Play a run with friends live, or fly solo

Play MDT Space Explorer