01
Short drag
Low power. The ship stays inside the pull for longer, so gravity has more time to bend it. Curves hard.
How to play
ONE DRAG,
ONE ANSWER
Starship Rescue asks you for exactly one decision per attempt: the direction and the strength of a single launch. After that there is no thrust, no steering and no correction. Gravity answers, and you watch it answer.
Everything below applies from the first sector. Nothing here is a spoiler — the game teaches all of it in the free fifteen.
01 · The gesture
Direction aims, distance powers
Drag anywhere on the field — you do not have to start on the ship. The direction of the drag is the direction of the launch. The distance you pull is the power behind it. Release to commit.
That is the whole control scheme. One thumb, no buttons, nothing to unlock and no second input hiding in a menu. The difficulty in this game is never in the execution of the gesture; it is entirely in choosing which gesture to make.
02
Long drag
High power. The ship crosses the field before the pull can do much. Flies straighter, arrives sooner.
03
The trade
Power buys you a straight line; patience buys you a curve. Most sectors want one of the two, not a compromise.
02 · Reading the field
The grid tells you where the pull is
The grid behind the sector is not decoration. It bends toward mass, and it bends harder where the pull is stronger. Read it before you drag and you can see the shape of the field you are launching into — where a shot will be dragged off line, and where it will pass through more or less untouched.
The aim line is the second thing worth trusting. It is a real trajectory computed by the same integrator that flies the ship, not an approximation drawn to look plausible. It is cut short deliberately, so it tells you how the shot leaves and starts to bend without handing you the rest of the route.
03 · From sector nine
Moons make it a timing puzzle
Nine sectors in, moons start orbiting the planets, and the puzzle gains a second dimension. Moons block and they never pull — a moon is an obstacle with a schedule, not another gravity well. They keep moving while you hold the drag, which means the field you are aiming at is not the field the ship will fly through.
So when you release matters as much as where you point. Hold the drag, watch the orbit come round, and let go on the beat. If watching the rhythm is hard, turn on Orbit tick in Settings and the moon period is sounded rather than seen.
01
Find the window
Watch one full orbit before you commit to anything. The gap you need is usually obvious once you have seen the cycle once.
02
Count the flight
Aim for where the moon will be when the ship arrives, not where it is when you release. Long shots need more lead.
03
Hold, do not rush
Nothing is on a timer. You can hold a drag for as long as you like and release on exactly the beat you want.
04 · If you are stuck
A route always exists
This is worth knowing, because it changes how it feels to be stuck: every sector in the game was solved before it shipped. A solver brute-forces nearly two thousand launches through the real physics and keeps only routes that reach the wormhole with genuine clearance and a watchable flight time. If a sector cannot be proven beatable, the build fails and it never ships.
So you are never looking for a route that might not be there. You are looking for one that is. When a sector resists, work through these in order:
Change the power before you change the angle
Most failed shots are the right direction at the wrong strength. Try the same line much weaker and much stronger before you start hunting for a new angle — the two extremes usually tell you which half of the field the answer is in.
Aim at the gravity, not at the target
The wormhole is where you want to end up, not where you should point. On most sectors past the opening, the launch that works is aimed at a planet, and the planet does the rest of the steering.
Let a body do the work twice
A shot can pass the same planet more than once. If a single bend does not get you there, look for the line that comes back around — the later sectors are full of routes that bend both ways.
Wait a beat longer
From sector nine, a shot that is right in every other respect fails on timing alone. If the line looks correct and the moon keeps eating it, the fix is when you release, not where you point.
Take it with three
Five stranded crew sit along a route that works, but only three of them are the toll: reaching the wormhole clears the sector, and three aboard is what opens the next one. All five is the real problem, and it is optional. If a sector is resisting, take it with three and come back for the other two.
05 · Try it
Fifteen sectors, no install
Everything on this page is taught inside the free fifteen sectors, and you can play those in a browser right now without a store or an install. It is the same build that ships to phones, carrying the free sectors and nothing else.