This is the two hundred fourth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our two hundred fourth random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality is performing some precision aerial maneuvers. It’s Nest Lander, by Clockwork Hippo, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

Physics based flight, old school skillful gameplay.

It’s time to get old school.

On its itch.io page, Nest Lander is described as “probably unlike anything you’ve played before”, but in my case it very much is like something I’ve played before. Two things, to be precise. Nest Lander is a mashup of Asteroids and Lunar Lander, two classic arcade games from 1979. The blue bird that players control in Nest Lander handles like the spaceship in Asteroids: it can hover indefinitely and rotate around, and players can impart thrust by flapping its wings. Once moving, the bird will continue to drift in that direction unless it rotates and corrects its course with some more thrusts. It’s some sweet, sweet zero gravity Newtonian flight, just like Atari used to make.

But the bird is not in space. It’s in various terrestrial locales, and its goal — in addition to nabbing golden eggs for extra points — is to land on nests. That’s where the Lunar Lander aspects come in. There’s no gravity to battle against as there is in Lunar Lander, but the bird still must approach nests slowly and at an appropriate angle, to avoid crashing. The single-screen levels in Nest Lander feature various walls and platforms that spell death for the poor bird if contacted. Only the nests are safe to (carefully) land on. This is made slightly easier by the fact that the bird (unlike the ship in Asteroids) can impart reverse thrust as well. This makes the final glide into a nest more straightforward.

Nest Lander is a simple production. It launches in a window, which can be maxmimized but cannot go into a proper fullscreen mode. It has a single, jaunty music track and a few repeating sound effects. The design is clearly aiming for that old arcade sensibility: players have a limited number of lives before they must start over, although there is an option to resume from the last level with their score reset. Score is clearly important, however. Many levels aren’t too hard to complete, but become much more challenging if one wants to collect all the golden eggs. Some levels even have extra lives to pick up, to help extend a run. The intent is for players to try for high scores and see how far they can get before losing all their lives.

But I wasn’t that inclined to persevere. I played through more than 20 levels in Nest Lander, albeit with a few score-resetting restarts, out of the 35 total on offer. This was enough to see the scenery change from a forest to mountains, but the challenges in each level didn’t change much. A single crash means restarting the whole level, which is frustrating when I had collected all the golden eggs and landed on all but the final nest. All of that gets reset upon death. Clockwork Hippo is clearly aiming for that type of challenge, but I didn’t find Nest Lander rewarding enough to keep going.

Others might disagree, of course. If you miss those old “thruster” arcade games, then Nest Lander might be just what you want. Personally I prefer the second ever entry in Scratching That Itch, Asteroid Farmer, for that, but Nest Lander may be worth a look too. If you missed it in the bundle, it’s sold for a minimum price of $1.49.

That’s 204 down, and only 1537 to go!