Zossed in Space

Zossed In Space follows the adventures of an unnamed spacecraft captain, impersonated by the player. There is no story, the goal is simply to survive a hundred sectors of space. Two alternate winning conditions are to either kill ten enemy ships or accumulate a hundred trade units.

In each sector, the ship appears on the bottom of the screen. It is directly controlled with four keys (left, right, up, down) to interact with respectively to avoid whatever is on screen. After reaching the top, the next sector begins. The most important aspect of survival is fuel management: the ship has five systems (weapons, propulsion, life support, defense and environment shields) which constantly use fuel. With a button press, the player enters command mode and can divide the main fuel reserve into the specific systems. This mode also serves as pause function.

Life support, environment shields and propulsion need to be over 0% at all times because otherwise the ship can't move anymore (propulsion) or instantly dies (the other two). Defense can theoretically be empty, but then encountering an enemy ships causes instant death. Weapons only need to be fueled for combat. Fuel is not only depleted over time, but also when encountering dangerous environments. For example, being hit by meteorites hurts the environmental shield fuel, the black whole drains life support or space junk the propulsion reserve.

After each screen is passed, the sector counter goes up by one. However, not all screens are dangerous. The player may also find traders (sell trade units for fuel), tankers (sell fuel for sectors) or free ports (allow to gamble for more trade units).