River's Rocket Works
River loves rockets, and Starship most of all. So I built him a space program.
How it works
You design a rocket in the workshop, then fly it. There are twelve missions, and they get bigger as you go.
- First Flight
- Edge of Space
- Come Home Booster
- Orbit!
- Station Delivery
- Moon Landing
- Mars Rover
- Rings of Saturn
- Red Spot Rally
- The Wormhole Run
- The Rainbow Race
- Asteroid Blaster
There's also a free flight mode for when you only want to fly around.
Built for a kid and a grown-up together
The game talks. A voice reads out every mission, so a kid who is still learning to read can play it. There's a co-pilot assist that quietly helps with the hard parts, so nobody ends the night frustrated. It works with an Xbox controller, a keyboard or a touch screen, and it remembers your stars in the browser.
Finish the missions and there's a certificate at the end.
The Rainbow Race
This is the silliest mission. A glowing rainbow track circles the whole solar system and you pick your racer. You don't have to earn it. Every mission is open from the start, and the title screen has a Rainbow Race button that takes you straight there.
- River, on a shooting star.
- Mom, on her unicorn.
- Dad, in a Viking ship pulled by goats.
- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, our white Labrador, in her lace collar.
Yes, that's her full name. We call her Justice.
What I learned
A game like this can carry real ideas. Getting to orbit isn't only about going up. You have to go sideways, very fast, and the Orbit mission makes you do it. A kid who has flown that once has learned something a diagram wouldn't teach.
It's one web page built on Three.js. If it runs slowly, try it on a computer before a phone.