Launchway
Skydiving · Build 34 · Playable

Spare Altitude

Four hundred metres and no engine. Altitude is the only thing you own, and everything you do spends it.

Works on phone, tablet and desktop · No download · No account

What it is

You step out at 400 metres. Below you are three places to land, worth 100, 250 and 600 — and the far one is deliberately further than you can reach in still air.

So the question is never where you want to go. It's whether you can still afford to get there.

Turning costs distance

Hands up, you glide almost three metres forward for every one you drop. Pull both toggles and you slow down — but you fall closer to one-and-a-half to one, so braking buys you time and takes away range. Turn hard and your sink rate climbs by half again.

Every input is a withdrawal. The good line isn't the one that points at the target, it's the one that arrives with something left over.

You can't plan the middle

The wind comes in three layers. Up high you're already in it, so you can read it off your own drift. Down low you can see it before you arrive, because there's a windsock at every zone.

The middle layer you cannot see at all. You find out what it's doing by flying into it, usually with about half your altitude already spent. That's the moment the run is actually decided — not at the door.

How to play

  • TurnHold one side
  • Slow down, lose rangeHold both

Two inputs, no menus.

On a desktop, the mouse and the keyboard both work.

What isn't settled yet

The descent works and the middle layer does its job. What's unproven is whether one run makes you want another — there's no career, no unlocks and nothing carried between jumps, so the reason to go again has to be the jump itself.

Build Log

  1. Renamed. The working title was Parachute, which names the equipment rather than the decision — and is far too common a word for anyone to find. Spare Altitude is what you actually spend.

  2. First descent. Four hundred metres, three landing zones, and the far one deliberately further than still air allows. That is what makes it a question of what you can afford rather than where you can aim.

Credits and licences

Built on three.js, used under the MIT licence with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Typefaces are licensed under the SIL Open Font Licence. Cover art was composited from a base image created with Grok (xAI).

Spare Altitude is original work by Launchway Games.