ORBITAL SANITATIONHOW TO PLAY

What you're trying to do

1. Launch your ship off the planet.
2. Fly through the junk floating in orbit. Touching it collects it.
3. Collect 100% of the junk. A banner tells you when you're authorized to land.
4. Land gently. Come down too fast and you'll crater.
5. Get paid. A receipt prints at the end of every shift. Read the deductions and weep.

Clear a world and the next one outward unlocks. There are twelve, from Mercury all the way to Pluto.

Controls

The whole game is played with one finger — or one button.

Touch / mouse:

• Drag anywhere and release to launch. Pull further for a harder throw.
• Tap to fire your booster (a little push away from the planet).
• Hold to raise your shield. Keep holding and the brake kicks in, slowing you down.
• Two fingers / scroll wheel zooms the camera out for a look around. It's just a peek — it never steers the ship.
• When you've landed or crashed, tap to move on.

Keyboard: the Space bar (or Enter) does everything a finger does — quick press to boost, hold for shield and brake. Escape pauses.

Control styles (in Settings):

• ANGRY BIRD — the drag-and-release launcher described above. The default.
• HAPPY GILMORE — a one-button launch, like the swing meter in an old golf game. Press once and an aiming arrow sweeps back and forth. Press again to lock your angle — now the power pumps up and down. Press a third time to fly. Hold a press down to back out. This mode makes the game playable on a TV remote, a presenter clicker, or one big button.

A tip about the throw: a gentler launch gives you a bigger fuel tank. The game assumes a soft toss means you plan to do the work with the booster, and hands you extra taps to do it with.

Your ship and your crew

The fleet. Three ships, pick one on the title screen:

• GREEN ENVY "NEW CHAD 69" — fast and twitchy, carries 6 cadets.
• SPECIAL K "GRYPHON" — the balanced one, carries 9.
• BOGGLE "SMARTCUBE" — slow, sturdy, carries 13.

Cadets are your crew. They ride outside the ship, trailing behind it in a chain, because the Department does not pay for seats. They are also your health bar: when heat, radiation, or enemy fire gets through, it takes a cadet, not the ship. Lose all of them and the next hit is for you.

🍕 Pizza floats among the junk. It's worth money like everything else — but grabbing one also rehires a lost cadet. If your chain is getting short, go find a pizza.

Fuel (boost). Each tap of the booster costs one unit of fuel. Fuel slowly refills on its own — but only while your shield is down. Hiding behind the shield is safe, but you aren't recharging while you do it.

Shield. Hold to raise it. It blocks heat, radiation, and weather, and splashes small debris aside. It doesn't refill fuel and it doesn't collect junk.

Brake. Keep holding after the shield is up and the ship starts shedding speed. It only ever slows you — it can't push you backwards. A quick brace before an impact keeps your momentum; a long hold bleeds it off for a landing.

The sky, top to bottom

• The surface — where you launch from and where you must return.
• The atmosphere (on worlds that have one) — glowing air near the ground. Flying through it fast makes heat, and heat costs cadets. Slow down or shield up.
• The corridor — the clean middle band where most of the junk lives. This is your workplace.
• The hazard belt — a ring of radiation higher up. The wall of the belt is the dangerous part; if you punch through it, the far side is calm. Deep junk hides out there for the brave.
• Deep space — go too far and you're simply gone. The receipt will say LOST.

The worlds

Twelve stops, sorted sunward to outward: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Luna, Mars, The Belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto–Charon. Each has its own gravity, junk, weather, and personality — Mercury is airless and harsh, Earth is busy, The Belt has locals who object to your presence, and Pluto comes with its moon Charon hanging overhead, close enough that careless pilots have landed on it by accident. Gravity changes everything: a throw that orbits Earth will fly off Pluto entirely.

Weather

Weather rolls in mid-shift with a banner and changes part of the sky: rain squalls, monsoons, acid rain, snowfall, dust squalls, dust walls, supersonic gales, ion storms and more, depending on the world. Wind sectors genuinely push and drag the ship. When the banner sounds, look up, see where the weather is sitting, and decide whether to work around it or shield through it.

Anomalies

Strange objects that appear in orbit and bend physics near them:

• ⚫ GRAVITATIONAL ANOMALY — pulls you toward it.
• ◉ REPULSOR NODE — pushes you away.
• 🌀 FRAME-DRAG VORTEX — twists your path sideways as you pass.

None of them are lethal by themselves. All of them will happily throw you into something that is.

Trouble (duty events)

Partway through a shift, the Department may radio in extra duties — or the neighborhood may object to your work:

• ☄ COMET DEFENSE DUTY — a comet streaks across the corridor. Get out of its lane or shield up.
• ⛏ THE LOCALS OBJECT — surface turrets open fire from below. Keep moving; standing still over a turret is how cadets retire.
• 👾 ALIEN NIMBY COALITION — a marching formation of invaders descends, firing as it comes. They can be dodged, outlasted, or — with the right power-up — dealt with.
• 🚨 ICE PATROL — interceptors scramble off the surface and climb after you. Outrun them, outclimb them, or lose them until the banner says SUSPECTS LOST. Occasionally the ice truck itself comes up — a boss pursuit. Good luck.

Power-ups

Rare pickups glowing among the junk. Some shifts have none.

• ▣ MAGNO-SCOOP — junk is drawn to you for about a minute. The best minute of your career.
• ◎ CROWD CONTROL FIELD — a standing field that pushes hazards away. Lasts the whole shift or until replaced.
• ☢ RAD-HARDENED PLATING — radiation immunity, long enough to cross the hazard belt slowly and comfortably.
• ◉ THE VISITORS — mysterious escorts take an interest in you and protect you. They leave when they leave. No explanation given.
• ⧉ QUANTUM MIRROR — a ghost copy of your cadet chain flies ahead of you, mirroring every move. The ghost crew do two things. They're teeth: enemies they touch are annihilated. And they sweep — junk the phantoms touch is collected exactly as if you'd flown through it yourself, which roughly doubles the width of your broom. Raising your shield reels the chain in and stops the sweeping, but the teeth keep biting. About fifty seconds, then the mirror closes.

Rivals (VS mode)

Toggle ⚔ VS RIVALS on the title screen and three computer-flown contractors launch alongside you, sweeping the same sky for the same junk. At the end, the bout standings rank everyone's haul, crew losses, and fate — LANDED, RECALLED, LITHOBRAKED, or LOST TO DEEP SPACE. Beating them isn't required to win. It's just required emotionally.

The deposit (the ending)

In a solo shift, reaching 100% doesn't end things — it starts the hard part. A city on the surface is chosen as the deposit site, and you fly the descent yourself, fully loaded. Bring it down gently on the mark. A botched landing at full cargo is a real crash. (In VS mode the autopilot handles the landing — the race was the point.)

Landing, in general: the ground cares how fast you're falling much more than how fast you're moving sideways. Sideways speed turns into a skid — bumpy but usually survivable. Downward speed turns into a crater.

The receipt

Every shift ends with an itemized pay statement: what you collected, what it was worth, and what the Department deducted. Pausing mid-shift shows the same receipt computed live, so you always know what walking away right now would pay. Pay is not guaranteed.

Odds and ends

• Sponsor boards — the billboards in the sky and on the surface are real ads from real sponsors. Tapping one opens the sponsor's website. They're scenery; they never hurt you.
• Attract mode — leave the game alone on the title screen and it plays itself, drifting from world to world like a screensaver. Any touch or key brings the menu back.
• The desk clock — land, walk away, and after a while a clock face fades in over the parked ship, showing your actual local time. The game moonlights as a clock.
• Settings — render quality (use FAST or FASTEST on big TVs), how long your flight trail lingers, your control style, your location (a zip code, only used to pick which local sponsor boards you see), and profile reset.
• Your progress — saved in your browser, on your device, like a memory card. Clearing your browser data clears your career.
• The music — Satie, Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, Pachelbel. Public domain. The Department doesn't license things.

Clock in. The sky isn't going to clean itself.