The long way home

Mission briefing

Your ship is gone. You are a very long way from Earth, with a suit, a tank of fuel, and the air in your lungs. The Long Way Home is a game about thrust being precious and drift being free. Every burn spends fuel you may never replace, so the fastest route is rarely the straight one. Swing past a planet and let its gravity throw you onward for nothing, and keep the fuel for the moment you actually need it. Between you and home: abandoned supply stations, each holding one decisive resupply. Sealed containers you can crack open if you have the patience. Debris fields that will shred you at speed and let you pass at a crawl. VESTA, the assistance unit strapped to your chest, talks you through it. She is a machine and says so, and she will tell you when your heading is wrong. Get to Earth before the oxygen runs out. Then do it again, carrying cargo.

Field manual

Everything is also an on-screen button, so it plays with a mouse, a keyboard or a touchscreen. DRAG anywhere to look around and aim. ENGINE or SPACE burns the main thruster — short taps, fuel is finite. STOP or X flips you around and burns retrograde; it is the only way to slow down out here. DRIFT or Z lays you flat along your heading, which streamlines you and lets you sidestep rock. ION DRIVE or V is a weak electric thrust that runs on battery instead of fuel. SCAN or F lights up nearby supplies and charts debris fields onto your map. REPAIR or T patches the suit. TAB, or a tap on the small map, opens the planning map — pick a destination there and your scanner becomes a compass. The AIM ONLY / HOLD = THRUST switch changes whether dragging also fires the engine.

Launch orders: press Launch mission above and the game loads on this page itself — nothing downloads and no form stands between you and the first move. It is designed for a flexible screen and takes its orders from mouse, keyboard or touch, depending on the mission. It adapts to both upright and wide screens, so phones, tablets and desktops all frame it sensibly. If it offers a fullscreen control, use it — a fight this size deserves the whole screen.

Field notes for survival operations

• Eat before you are hungry and drink before you are thirsty. Survival meters punish late reactions; the whole genre is a logistics exam disguised as an adventure.
• Build the shelter before the project. A safe place to return to converts every expedition from a gamble into a commute, and commutes are how survival games get beaten.
• Carry less, mark more. Inventory space is the real currency — leave the third backup of anything, and mark every resource you pass so future-you can run a supply route instead of a search party.

The long way home — questions from the ranks

What does it cost to play The long way home?

Nothing at all. The mission is free from the first order to the last — no sign-up, no download, no paid tier guarding the good levels. The advertising around this page is what keeps the board free.

What sort of mission is The long way home?

The long way home is filed in our Survival theatre. Like every operation on this board, it is a browser game — read the briefing above for the publisher's own account of what you are deploying into.

Can I run The long way home on a phone or tablet?

Yes. It plays in the browser on phones and tablets exactly as it does on a computer. It adapts to both upright and wide screens, so phones, tablets and desktops all frame it sensibly.

Do I have to install anything before playing?

No installation of any kind. The long way home is an HTML5 game: press the launch button and it loads on this page, and closing the tab leaves nothing behind.

After-action

Mission complete, or still pinned down? The full Survival theatre is one click away — Outlast the situation: hunger, weather, islands, sieges and things considerably worse than weather. One hundred and forty-seven ways to still be standing when the session ends.