Celestial Mechanica

Celestial Mechanica is a charming and challenging pixel art metroidvania in which players take on the role of a celestial being banished from heaven that must find a way back. Developed by Roger Hicks (author of rComplex) and Paul Veer (animator for the Knytt Stories and Robot Wants games), this game mixes puzzles, platforming and adventure with 2D gameplay in a manner similar to the Metroid saga.

The player is able to change many key variables within the simulation, including planetary temperature, water, ice, atmosphere, and planetary tilt. This allows students to visualize the delicate balance of galactic factors that makes Earth hospitable for life and helps cement the relationships between things like orbits, planet temperatures, the length of a day or year, and other key planetary dynamics.

In addition to allowing students to play through this fun, engaging game, it's possible to use the program as a jumping off point for further research on the Web for student reports, essays or presentations on the topic of orbital mechanics. This would be especially true for students who are attempting to understand why spacecraft move in the ways that they do and how these motions relate to the force of gravity between a spacecraft and a planet or other celestial body.

This free application software download runs on all Windows 32 or 64-bit operating systems and requires a computer with at least 4.5 MB of video memory to display high resolution textures of planets. It also provides a low resolution texture version for system running only 4.5 MB of video memory. This program combines a planetarium with a telescope simulator and is able to read external catalogs of stars (including SAO) and deep sky objects. It displays with great accuracy the position of stars on the local horizon, their elongations and heliocentric positions as well as the phases of the moon.