A vector space shooter for MAD-65 · alpha · 2nd place, Games, NRG 2026
It is the year 2093. Unmanned probes sent by the largest corporations on Earth discover an extraordinary mineral in the rings of Saturn. It is given the working name SATURNium. The material has properties never observed before — among them an effect on the propagation of electromagnetic and gravitational waves, which raises hopes of building the drive of the future.
Before long, small problems begin to appear near the new mining fields. Automated ships start reporting false readings. Objects show up on radar out of nowhere. Some craft collide with something that was not there a moment earlier.
Five crewed ships launch from the Titan station to investigate the anomaly. You fly one of them. Your task is to clear one region of the rings after another and press on — except that something here is decidedly not the way it should be.
Escape from Saturn is Asteroids on steroids: a large, wrapping world, a camera that rotates and zooms, vector graphics and, in the finished game, a story campaign. It is played in portrait, with the screen rotated 90° as on an arcade monitor standing upright.
This is an alpha, and not a complete game. Treat it as a teaser or early demo: two gameplay elements — a fight in a single sector and the flight through the tunnel that leads out of it — and one demo level. There is no campaign yet, and no final graphics, music or the rest of the planned content. It ends after the first tunnel.
Version 0.7 alpha, shown at NRG 2026, where it took 2nd place in the Games category. It contains:
Balance, timing and presentation will change. Feedback is welcome: mm{at}codepainters.com. Please say which version you played and what you were doing at the time.
Download Escape from Saturn alpha (Windows)
ZIP archive, 3.1 MB · includes the simulator and everything needed to run · version 0.7 alpha, released 2026-10-17
You do not need a physical MAD-65 console. The download contains the game plus madsim, a simulator that runs the whole machine on your Windows PC.
start_efs.bat. madsim opens with the game, rotated 90°.No installer, no dependencies, nothing written outside the folder. Delete the folder to uninstall.
Plug in a USB gamepad and play — no configuration. The D-pad or the left stick steers; the two vertically opposed face buttons (A/Cross, Y/Triangle) are FIRE 1, the two horizontally opposed ones (X/Square, B/Circle) are FIRE 2.
| Arrow keys | left / right: turn; up / down: speed up and slow down |
|---|---|
| Right Ctrl | FIRE 1 — fire the current weapon |
| Right Shift | FIRE 2 — one click switches weapon (blaster / laser), two clicks teleport |
| Ctrl + Shift | EMP pulse (FIRE 1 + FIRE 2 together) |
| Space or P | pause / resume |
| M | mute audio |
| F12 | rotate the screen 90° |
| Esc | quit |
Boost: select the top speed, release the stick, then push up again while the ship is still flying at full speed.
Teleport is available from the start (double-click FIRE 2) but costs 50 SATURNium; with less, nothing happens. SATURNium comes from breaking the smallest rocks — the ship collects the clouds by itself. Your stock shows as faint sparks circling the ship. The laser runs on it too (8 units a shot), and a full stock reduces the damage you take.
Weapons: you start with the blaster only. The laser drops from a defeated pulsar; the EMP pulse drops from a destroyed EMP mine (it eats almost all your SATURNium, but destroys many enemies at once); a defeated spider leaves a shield. Loot flies to the ship by itself.
The arrow keys and Right Ctrl / Right Shift are wired to joystick port 1 — exactly what a real MAD-65 joystick would send. Port 2: W A S D, Left Shift = FIRE 1, Left Ctrl = FIRE 2.
It is an alpha: short, unfinished and unbalanced. Report anything that crashes, freezes, flickers or feels unfair.