Play Commander Keen 1: Marooned on Mars (Invasion of the Vorticons) Online

Commander Keen 1: Marooned on Mars came out in 1990 for MS-DOS, developed by id Software. It was one of the early side-scrolling platformers on PC, back when most games of that style were still on consoles. The game put you in control of Billy Blaze, an eight-year-old who builds a spaceship in his backyard and accidentally ends up stranded on Mars.

You guide Billy through a series of interconnected screens, each one a small puzzle or platforming challenge. Your main goal is to recover the missing parts of your ship, which are scattered across the Martian landscape. You use a pogo stick to jump higher and avoid enemies, and you collect candy bars and soda to keep your health up. The pacing is methodical; you explore each area carefully, looking for keys and switches to open up new paths. It feels like a mix of exploration and light problem-solving, with just enough tension to keep you focused. Playing it gives you that quiet satisfaction of figuring things out on your own.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".