A vector-style rock blasting game for PC

Rock Blaster, one of the original games on the Retro arcade shelf of Games by Zaweba, is vector-style rock blasting in space. You spin, thrust and shoot your way through a drifting field of rocks while saucers prowl and shoot back. It is free, original and plays offline on Windows.

It's drawn in the style of an 8-bit home computer, with clean glowing lines on a black sky, and like every game in the app it is made from scratch.

Flying the ship

Left and Right turn the ship, Up thrusts, and Space or Z fires. The ship drifts once it's moving, so thrust is something to use in short bursts. Too much and you'll be sliding across the screen with no way to stop quickly.

Many players find they do best by staying near the middle of the screen, turning to shoot, and only thrusting to dodge. A ship that sits still and turns is easier to control than one that flies about.

Splitting the rocks

Shoot the rocks. Big ones split into two middling ones, which split into two small ones. So every big rock you hit makes the screen busier before it gets quieter. Clear the screen and the next wave starts, busier still.

A good habit is to finish off the pieces of one rock before breaking another big one. If you shoot every big rock at once, the screen fills with fast small pieces coming from everywhere.

Saucers and hyperspace

Saucers appear and shoot back, and the small ones aim. Deal with them quickly, because a small saucer left alone will find you eventually.

Down or Shift is hyperspace. It whisks you away to another part of the screen, but it's a gamble: you might land somewhere safe or right next to a rock. Save it for when there's truly no other way out.

You get an extra ship every 10,000 points, so a long careful game rewards patience.

Waves get busier as you go, so the early ones are the time to build a lead and bank points towards the next extra ship. Later on the screen fills with fragments and saucers, and survival matters more than speed. A patient player who clears each rock family in turn and keeps hyperspace for emergencies tends to last much longer than one who fires at everything.

Like all the retro games in the app, Rock Blaster is quick to pick up. One game might last a minute or twenty, and there is no menu to wade through between tries.

Opening Rock Blaster

Rock Blaster is on the Retro arcade shelf of Games by Zaweba, which holds 26 original games in the style of 8-bit and 16-bit home computers and early-90s PCs. Press Ctrl+F and type its name to find it. The title card explains how to play, F1 explains it again, Esc pauses and F11 makes it fill the screen. The game pauses itself if you switch to another window.

Your best score and plays are kept on the tile, in a scores file on your PC. There are no adverts and no accounts, and every line and every sound is made in code. If you like the vector look, Moon Lander on the same shelf has the same glowing lines with a very different challenge: landing gently on jagged lunar hills with not quite enough fuel.