Astroblast is a retro space shooter drawn in clean vector lines, and you can play Astroblast unblocked right here in your browser. You fly a tiny arrowhead of a ship among slowly spinning rocks, and every shot that lands cracks a rock into smaller, quicker pieces. Saucers drift through now and then and shoot back. Your ship keeps sliding after you stop thrusting, which makes every flight feel a little slippery and a lot more interesting.
What You’re Up Against
Each wave begins with a ring of big rocks drifting in from the edges. Wave one has four, and every wave after that adds one more. Rocks in later waves also start out a touch faster. Hit a large rock and it breaks into two medium ones. Hit those and you get small fragments, which vanish on the next hit.
The screen wraps around, so anything that drifts off the right side pops back in on the left, and the same goes for top and bottom. That includes you, the rocks and every bullet. A wave is only over when all the rocks and saucers are gone.
Two kinds of saucer show up. The large one sprays shots in random directions. The small one leads its aim toward where you are heading, and it gets more accurate as your score grows, reaching full precision around 35,000 points. Saucer shots can smash rocks too, though you earn nothing when they do.
Your First Minute of Astroblast
Press PLAY and your ship appears in the middle of the screen, blinking. That blink means you are shielded for two seconds, so use it to turn and face the nearest rock instead of thrusting anywhere. Tap fire a few times and watch your bullets travel. They are slow and fade after a short distance, so you have to be fairly close to land hits.
The first saucer usually arrives somewhere between 14 and 22 seconds in. You will hear it before you see it, since each saucer makes a two-tone hum as it crosses. As your score rises, saucers come more often and the small, dangerous kind becomes far more likely to appear.
Points and Extra Ships
Smaller targets are worth more. Big rocks earn 20, mid-size ones 50 and the smallest 100. The large saucer earns 200, but the small saucer pays a full 1,000, which makes it the best prize on the screen.
You begin with three ships. Bumping into anything solid, or catching an enemy bullet, costs one. The run keeps going even when the LIVES counter reads zero, and the next hit after that ends it. Every 10,000 points adds a ship back. When you respawn, you get the same short shield as at the start.
Astroblast Tips for Longer Runs
The ship is easy to turn but hard to stop. These habits help:
- Use short bursts of thrust. A quick tap moves you a little. Holding the button can send you coasting into trouble.
- Split one rock at a time. Every hit doubles the pieces, so mop up the small bits before cracking the next big rock.
- Keep an eye on all four edges. A fragment leaving one side can come back right behind you.
- Hunt the small saucer early. It pays the most, and the longer it stays, the better it aims.
- Fire in bursts. You get a maximum of five bullets in the air, and each one disappears after roughly 1.5 seconds.
Mistakes New Players Make
The most common one is flying at full speed toward the action. Your ship has a top speed and drag that slowly bleeds off momentum, but it still takes a moment to slow down, and a big rock can fill that gap. Another is jumping to hyperspace too early. After a jump you get a random push in a new direction and have to wait 1.2 seconds before jumping again. Finally, many players ignore the large saucer because it looks clumsy, yet its random shots still cost a ship.
Keyboard, Gamepad or Touch
On a laptop, the arrow keys or WASD steer and thrust, Space or Z fires, and Left Shift or X makes the hyperspace jump. Esc pauses. A gamepad works too.
On a touch screen you get an on-screen stick plus four buttons. The OPTIONS menu has a volume slider and a POST PROCESSING checkbox that controls the glow. Unticking it is worth trying if the game feels choppy on an older school Chromebook, because the glow is the heaviest part to draw. Everything else, including the sound, is generated in code, so there is nothing extra to download once the page loads.
Who It Suits and What to Play Next
A run can last two minutes or twenty, depending on how carefully you fly, so it works for a short break or a longer stretch of free time. Scores climb quickly once you learn to clear rocks in order, which gives you a clear reason to try again.
If you like twitchy arcade shooting, try Road Agent for gunfire on a winding highway instead of open space. Andromeda Invaders keeps the retro shooting but gives you a cannon that fires by itself while boulders fall. For something calmer from the same collection, Bobble Pop swaps rocks for colored bubbles. You can browse more picks on the arcade games page.
