The Moon is our Friend
The Moon is our Friend seems to share many similarities with Powerdive’s Lunorbit, where you’re circling a celestial body and using gravity as the main mechanic. They were both even started as PlayJam 7 submissions before being turned into full Catalog releases. They each have enough to set them apart, but enough in common that if you like one, you’ll probably enjoy the other!
In The Moon is our Friend, you are the Moon. You circle the Earth with the crank at a specific orbital distance and protect it from incoming meteors. You do this with your own gravitational field – the Moon creates its own gravity that will pull meteors one way or another, and you use this force to make them careen safely past the Earth, or collide into each other for extra points and health refills. There are different kinds of missions to advance through the story mode, like “make three sets of meteors collide with each other” or “survive for two minutes,” and there are even boss fights. Zen and endless modes round out the package, and online leaderboards for the Catalog buyers give you someone to fight against.
The Earth has little eyes to anthropomorphize it and make you try harder, and it’ll occasionally shoot out a rocket to resupply you with additional health, shields, or screen-clearing bombs (which you’ll have to spin around to catch while also keeping everyone out of harm’s way). Take too many hits (you or the Earth), and it’s mission failed. You can even get additional moons as you advance in the story, and the extra moon makes the gravity do all sorts of things.
The feel of it is really good – it’s basically a 1:1 Moon:crank control scheme. But man is it HARD. Maybe it’s the inversion of expectations; here, you’re not destroying things in space like in most games (including Lunorbit), but you’re instead dodging them and making them miss the Earth at the same time. The gravitational pull takes a bit of getting used to, too. However, you’ll feel yourself getting better with each round played. I don’t know if I’ll ever get better enough to actually beat it, but I can at least do well enough to get on the leaderboards!
It’s a deceptively difficult gravity-based action game that feels like it could be a bells-and-whistles update of a 1980s arcade hit. Would love to see someone get into flow state and really blow me away with their skill at this game! I keep trying but probably won’t ever really get good at this one. Still fun to try! And it feels good.
(Game jam version released March 10, 2025, on Itch, still available as free demo from full game page. Full game released May 18, 2025, on Itch and November 18, 2025, on Catalog. Copy provided by developer.)