Rock Blaster
Pointing Is Not Going
A ship in a field of drifting rocks, where whatever leaves one edge comes back on the other. Shoot a large rock and it breaks into two smaller ones, so clearing the screen briefly makes it more dangerous. A flying saucer turns up at intervals and shoots back.
Thrust Changes Velocity, Not Position
The hardest thing to unlearn here is that pointing somewhere is not going somewhere. Rotating turns the ship without altering where it is headed; every burn of the engine adds to the velocity you already had. The game softens this with a little drag, as the arcade original did, so a ship left alone loses about half its speed every three seconds. In space nothing would take that speed away, and stopping would mean turning around and burning an equal amount back. That is Newton's first law with the friction removed, the condition almost everything in space is in and almost nothing on Earth is.
How to play
- Left and right rotate, up thrusts, Space or a click fires.
- Short taps of thrust are easier to correct than long ones.
- Break the big rocks apart one at a time rather than opening several at once.
- Shift jumps to hyperspace, which drops you somewhere at random and now and then destroys the ship.
