Simple games. It’s one of the crowning achievements of the Xbox Live Indie Games channel. Without them it would just be a silly, degraded version of XBLA. In fact, most games on the service amount to little more than simple platformers, RPGs, puzzle games, or shooters. Cyber Lander: Mission Space is no different really.

In Cyber Lander you’re goal is simple, as mentioned above. You take control of a lunar lander-like device and attempt to fly it through an area of the moon making daring and brave landings within the caverns and crevices of the moon’s surface. Should you land in a more difficult spot, you’ll get more points.

The hook here is that the controls are physics and propulsion based. In order to or move left you must move the joystick right, in order to move right you must move left. Although since it’s propulsion based, it’s not like any movements will be instantaneous. Additionally, when it comes time to land you’ll need to use your thrusters to slow down your landing. Should you come down too hard you’ll crash and everybody will die. Finally, there’s an even more difficult control method where by the left and right thrusters won’t directly move you, but instead tilt the ship in that direction so the bottom thruster can propel you forward.

Unfortunately, beyond that there’s not much to do Cyber Lander. The game can be mildly enjoyable for a few minutes, but it gets old pretty fast. Still though, if you’re looking to live out your wildest lunar landing dreams, you’d be hard pressed to find a cheaper version out there coming in at just a single dollar.

[Buy/Try]

[This is not a review. It is simply a "first impressions" based on less than an hour of gameplay.]