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Planet rescue missions

Pro packv3.0.0-12DArcade

Rescue objectives for a gravity cave-flyer: open the factories, land so the walkers can climb aboard, and dock with the mothership to bring them home. The rules plug into a `cave-flyer` session, and a preset puts them together as a complete game in the style of the 1987 Atari ST rescue game Oids.

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Released October 19, 2026 · updated October 20, 2026

Planet rescue missions: a screenshot of its demo
A note about these graphics

Expansion packs don't come with graphics. This screenshot is one way of drawing what the pack does, made for its demo: none of the sprites, tiles or backgrounds in it are in the pack.

That's by design. A pack is a game's logic, mechanics and effects, and it works with whatever art you give it. Some packs draw effects, backdrops or 3D scenes of their own, but none carries a game's sprites.

So the look is yours. Make the art on phaser.io, bring your own, or let your agent draw it in code: the same pack can look like anything.

What it does

The pack adds two rules to a cave-flyer planet. The rescue rule reads the planet's factories and its mothership. One pellet blasts a factory open and a second kills a walker still inside. The walkers leave one at a time, wander, and walk along the ground to a landed ship within boarding distance, climbing steps no steeper than you allow. Your own engine flame and shield kill any they touch, so where and how you land matters. Walkers aboard die with the ship unless you turn that off.

A full hold, or the planet's last walker, brings the mothership, either above the ship at the top of the play area or at the planet's drop-off point. Its probe drops as you come within range, and docking needs the ship's nose close to the probe's tip, nearly upright and moving slowly. A delivery scores points per walker, can award an extra ship every so many rescued, and unloads, refuels and restocks the ship. The last delivery of a planet runs a departure and a journey before the next planet's drop-off.

Every step announces itself as an event (factory-open, oid-aboard, oid-killed, mothership, probe, docked, warp, drop-off and more), and rescueOf reads the walkers, factories, hold, rescued count, mothership and journey as plain state, so your game draws the scene and plays the sounds while the rules stay in the pack.

Features

  • Factories and walkers — factories that open to a shot, walkers that leave on a timer, wander and walk to a landed ship, and die in its flame or shield.
  • A mothership and a probe — arrives above the ship or at a drop-off point, drops its probe on approach, and takes delivery only from a slow, upright, nose-first docking.
  • Scoring and extra lives — points per walker delivered and a bonus ship for every set number rescued.
  • Planet to planet — docked, departing and warp phases between planets, each with its own timing and event.
  • Burning scenery — a trees rule where shot or blasted trees burn for a set time and leave a stump.
  • A complete preset — oidsPreset builds three planetoids with gun emplacements, missile and sphere launchers, pop-up towers, gravity stations, repulsors, shielded home bases launching hunters, fuel bases and a vault reached by teleporter, with four ships, eight walkers a load and four bombs restocked on docking.
  • Pieces to reuse — the preset's planetoids, ridge generator, installation kinds, flyers, projectiles and ship outline, each exported for your own planets.

Good for

  • Rescue cave-flyers in the style of Oids, where the challenge is landing safely near the people you came for.
  • Thrust-and-gravity games with a delivery loop, where a hold fills up and must be carried to a waiting ship.
  • Short single-planet missions, with smaller loads and your own scoring, built from the rules alone.
  • Retro home-computer remakes that want a ready three-planetoid campaign in the original's style as a starting point.

Make it yours

The rules take their options directly. You choose how often walkers leave a factory, how fast they walk, how far they will walk to the ship and how steep a step they can climb; how close, upright and slow a docking must be and how long it lasts; where the mothership arrives and the range at which its probe drops; the score per walker, the extra ship interval, and the length of the departure and the journey. The trees rule takes its burn time and score.

Two quite different games come from the same pack. The preset is a three-planetoid campaign with Easy, Normal and Arcade difficulty (scaling enemy fire, launches and projectile speed), a choice of planetoids and their order, a gravity multiplier, a view scale, and your own count of lives, bombs and walkers per load. Or skip the preset and add rescueRule and treesRule to a planet of your own design, a single cave with four-walker loads and its own scoring.

A quick look

The preset, and the rules on a planet of your own:

const CF = game.caveFlyer, OR = game.oidsRescue;
const g = CF.createCaveFlyer(OR.oidsPreset({ difficulty: 'normal', capacity: 6, arrive: 'drop-off' }));
// or your own rescue game:
const def = { ...myPlanetoid, rules: [OR.rescueRule({ ...OR.OIDS_RESCUE, score: 100, extraLifePer: 4 }), OR.treesRule()] };
OR.rescueOf(g.state);            // { oids, factories, aboard, rescued, mothership, transit }
OR.oidsLeft(g); OR.probeTip(g);  // free walkers left on the planet; where the docking probe hangs

Works with

  • cave-flyer — required: the session the rules plug into, with the ship, gun, shield, installations and lives.
  • thrust-craft — required: the flight model under the ship.
  • thrust-rules — the reactor and pod objectives, for a towing game rather than a rescue.

Good to know

  • One mothership and one docking point per planet.
  • Walkers follow the first ground below them and stop at a step steeper than their limit; they do not climb ladders or cross gaps.
  • No level data or physics tables of the original survive, so the preset's planetoids, physics, enemy rates and scores are authored estimates in its style.
  • Two shields touching do not drain each other.
  • The pack draws nothing; your game renders the walkers, factories, probe and journey from the state.

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