Slingshot Speeders v0.1.0 is live, first stable build, two new maps, test site, real gravity

Slingshot Speeders is a free 2D orbital racer in the browser. Inverse-square gravity (same falloff as the solar system). Force-based ship. Slingshots. Capture a closed orbit. Public SCORE / TIME / FUEL boards. Server owns the race: you send button presses, not position or time.

Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/ Test: https://test.slingshotspeeders.com/ Usage: https://slingshotspeeders.com/usage Changelog: https://slingshotspeeders.com/changelog

v0.1.0 — first stable production build (2026-08-21). Live stays tagged. New work goes through test, then a promote. Production boards stay; we do not edit the live game in place.

Maps

Trio (gold New!) — three Rendezvous-size free-moving pullers. They tug on each other. Start in a low orbit around one. Hop and park a closed orbit on another. Empty boards.

Snake (gold New!) — short sideways S, about nine wells, tips flared so the bends are not hairpins. Fly left → right. Static pull along the path, moons on mixed-radius rails, moving pushers (first map that ships push wells). Capture the green ring on the last well. Empty boards.

Still there: Easy, Asteroid Field, Planet & Moon, Chaos, Slingshot, Elevator, Rendezvous, Trefoil (online race).

Play

• One fuel tank. RCS at half thrust costs half as much.
• Pull wells/moons: arrows in. Pushers: arrows out.
• Home subtitle: The first orbital racing game.
• Arcade pixel type (Kenney Mini Square, CC0). Same width every letter. Home, HUD, WHAT'S NEW, USAGE, name box.
• STRESS TEST is gone from home.

Watch

• The white trajectory is the one recorded during the run. Watch does not re-solve a second path.
• Same ribbon as live: no hitch, no hole behind the ship.
• Live coast line refreshes twice a second so it stays with the ship even when you are not thrusting.
• Recent runs open in Watch again, including tapes from the two-tank era.
• Win card shows time and fuel right away. Score waits for the logged board number.

Usage

• USAGE opens a real page (/usage), not an in-game graph.
• Four live charts: visits, plays, fuel, distance.

Under the hood (this is the stable cut)

• Gravity and win/crash/fuel rules live in one shared sim. Client and server cannot disagree about gravity.
• Score lists are not silently rewritten on every boot (migration is gated). One owner for run outcome.
• License audit: proprietary game (Masland Tech LLC). 457 linked crates checked. Zero copyleft. Third-party notices shipped. Fira Mono (OFL) replaced with Kenney Mini Square (CC0).
• Test and production are two sites on the same machine: different port, wasm, and database. Production sqlite is never overwritten by test. Test is noindex.

Future orbitmap

• Map making — drop gravity wells, set start position and velocity, fly the map you just built.
• Teleportation — pads that jump you across the field without breaking the orbit game.
• Weekly challenges — a rotating scored objective, fresh boards each week.
• New race track — a second online-race layout (not only Trefoil).
• Ship classes — different hulls with different thrust / tank / handling. Same gravity.
• Kessler Run — new map. Debris field. Thread it. Capture on the other side.