Other gameplay

Dialogue for money

In order to construct spacecraft in the strategy segments of the game, you need seed capital, and you get it by the cosmonauts talking with different influential people (such as the Nomenclature or the Pope), trying to convince them to finance your project. These segments consist of doing a series of dialogue choices, and the amount of money you finally receive depends on what the cosmonauts say. You have to be flattering, and also convince the person the cosmonauts are talking to that they can profit from the project. Sometimes these segments end with the cosmonauts talking to each other, and saying different things depending on how well the dialogue went.

Steering the satellite

When you’ve built the satellite, and it has been launched into space, you play a sequence where you must steer it so it gets close enough to the moon. You do this via a control panel. In the middle there’s a window with a number that shows how far away the satellite is from the moon, and the goal is to decrease this number as much as possible. The lever to the right controls how fast the satellite moves, and the two knobs below control the direction. Begin by pulling up the speed, and watch the distance number decreasing. After a while the number starts to increase again. Then you can pull down the speed to stop, adjust one or both of the steering knobs, and pull up the speed again. Continue to adjust the steering knobs every time the distance starts increasing instead of decreasing, until the satellite gets close enough.

Exploring the moon

When the cosmonauts have landed on the moon, they must explore it and find the person who lives there. You view the moon surface from the perspective of the cosmonauts, and can click on the image to turn right or left, or to move forward (though sometimes you’ll get to a wall, and then you can’t move forward, but have to turn around and find another way). Walk around until you see some mysterious containers on the ground, and then follow these to reach the goal.