Flatspace Commander
I've spent the last few weeks trying to recreate that specific feeling of playing Elite on my Commodore 64 back in the 80s. If you played it, you know the feeling, just you, a black screen, some white wireframe lines, and that constant fear of blowing up while trying to dock. I'm calling it Flatspace Commander, and I'm keeping it strictly 1-bit. It's pure black and white.
You start exactly how we did back then, with 100 credits and a "Harmless" rating. It's not much, so you have to hustle between systems just to afford fuel and maybe a ton of computers if you're lucky. Since this is a PWA for phones, I'm keeping the controls simple. You slide your thumb to move and the ship auto-fires whilst in combat. I struggled with how to handle missiles, but I've settled on a "flick up" gesture so it's fast and doesn't get in the way of steering. It also works on desktop clients with dedicated keyboard commands, but it's really best experienced on a mobile device.
I'm building this in Vanilla JS with the help from Claude, because I want it to be fast and work offline, like an old-school cartridge. It's been fun trying to get that "Jameson" feeling right. It's basically a love letter to that kid sitting on the floor in front of a CRT TV, wondering if he'd ever actually make it to Elite status. There's still a lot to do, but the galaxy is finally starting to look familiar again.
If you fancy giving the game a try, you can find it here: flatspace-commander.philipnewborough.co.uk