Portugues
Journey to the Steam Planet
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About the game
A small orange rocket powered by steam has set off for the steam planet, and space is not making it easy. Grey asteroids drift down the screen, UFOs swoop in and shoot, and clouds of hot steam float past; touching any of them, or a UFO bullet, ends the trip. Your rocket fires straight ahead, breaking asteroids for 10 points and UFOs for 100.
Getting further takes fuel. The cans that destroyed asteroids and UFOs sometimes leave behind are worth 200 points each and fill one segment of the gauge in the bottom corner. Once it is full, hold the charge button: the engine burns through the fuel, and when the gauge is empty the rocket boosts upward off the screen, invulnerable for the moment and smashing through anything in its way. The next level starts with a longer gauge and a busier sky, and the score keeps climbing until you crash.
The author's note is honest about the ending: the steam planet itself is too far away for the rocket to reach ("read: I ran out of cartridge space"), so the journey is about how far you can get.
Playing it here
Journey to the Steam Planet was made for WASM-4, a fantasy console: an imaginary handheld with a 160 by 160 screen, four colours, a D-pad and two buttons, for which independent developers write new games. QuaternionWake wrote it in Zig in July 2026 for the Zero Sugar Added Jam, and it runs here in the official WASM-4 runtime. Click Play and press X on the title screen.
There is no saved progress. Enter opens the WASM-4 menu, where you can save and load the state while the page is open (2 and 4 do the same directly). A gamepad works too, and on touch screens an on-screen D-pad and buttons appear.
Controls
| Key | WASM-4 button | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Arrow keys | D-pad | fly in any direction |
| Z | button 2 | fire |
| X | button 1 | charge the engine when the fuel gauge is full; start |
| X / Z (after a crash) | buttons 1 and 2 | try again / back to the menu |
| Enter | — | WASM-4 menu |
Space, V or the period key also work as X, and C or the comma key as Z.
A few things worth knowing
Charging is risky. While the engine charges, you can still steer, but you are not yet protected; clear the area around you before pressing X.
Steam can't be shot. Bullets break asteroids and UFOs, but the steam puffs have to be avoided.
UFOs pay twice. They take several hits, but they are worth the most points and drop fuel more often than asteroids, so it is worth hunting them.
Credits and licence
Journey to the Steam Planet was created by QuaternionWake, who wrote the game, its graphics and its sounds in Zig. It is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3; the source code of the build served here, and the script that compiles it, are hosted alongside the game. The compiled game also contains the WASM-4 bindings (ISC licence), and it runs here in the WASM-4 runtime (ISC licence). The licence texts are linked from this page.