How to play
Drag or move the pointer to steer your ship. Shoot rocks for points and avoid collisions. You have 3 lives.
About Star Blaster
Star Blaster puts you in a small green ship at the bottom of the screen with an endless field of asteroids falling towards you. Your cannon fires on its own. All you have to do is move, and decide, several times a second, whether to line up a shot or get out of the way.
How to play
Drag your finger or move the mouse left and right. The ship follows instantly. A stream of yellow shots leaves the nose of the ship about six times a second, straight up, without you pressing anything.
Grey rocks of different sizes drift down from the top at different speeds. Hit one with a shot and it is destroyed for a point. Every rock takes a single hit, large or small. If a rock reaches the bottom and touches your ship, you lose one of three lives. Lose all three and the run ends, and a tap starts another.
A rock that slips past without touching you costs nothing. That detail matters more than it seems.
You do not have to shoot everything
Because missed rocks are free, Star Blaster is really a game about choosing. When three rocks are coming down side by side, you cannot get them all, and trying to is how ships get lost. Pick the ones you can reach safely, shoot those, and slide clear of the rest.
A useful habit is to deal with rocks while they are still high on the screen. Sit underneath one early and the stream of shots will catch it long before it becomes a danger. The risky rocks are the ones you notice late, low down and close to the ship.
The game speeds up
At the start, a new rock appears a little more often than once a second. The gap shrinks quickly, and by the time you are half a minute in they are arriving nearly three times as fast. The rocks themselves do not fall quicker, but there are a lot more of them, and gaps you used to stroll through now need threading.
When it gets crowded, small movements work better than big ones. Sweeping from one side of the screen to the other sprays your shots across the field and hits very little, and it carries your ship under rocks you were not watching. Short shuffles left and right keep your fire concentrated and your ship in space you have already cleared.
The big rocks are easier to hit and easier to be hit by. The small fast ones are the ones that end runs. If you have to choose which to keep an eye on, watch the quick ones.
Scores
Fifty is a solid first target. A hundred means you have made it into the busy part of the game. Beyond that, every extra point comes from staying calm while the screen fills up.
A good one for touchscreens
Star Blaster feels particularly natural on a phone, where your thumb is the ship. It works just as well with a mouse. Runs last a minute or three, there is nothing to read or set up, and the pace builds so gradually that you only notice how busy it has become when you look up from a new best score.
The game is free and plays in your browser with no download.