Asteroids Games

Asteroids games drop you into space surrounded by rocks. Sometimes you shoot them, sometimes you dodge them and sometimes you put them to use. There are about 60 on the site, including the classic Asteroids and plenty of versions and takes on the idea.

The classic, and what makes it hard

Asteroids is an Atari game from 1979. Your ship is a triangle in the middle of the screen, and it doesn't move with the arrow keys like a car. You rotate, thrust, and keep drifting on momentum. That momentum is what trips people up at first: thrust too hard and it's tough to stop. Leave one side of the screen and you reappear on the other, and big rocks break into smaller, faster pieces when you hit them. Every so often an enemy saucer crosses the screen and shoots back.

To play well, you don't need to fire nonstop. It's better to clear the area around your ship and keep open space around you. A screen full of small fragments is far more dangerous than one with two big rocks.

A few more things worth knowing about the original. The enemy saucers come in two sizes, and the small one aims much better than the large one, so the smart move is to get rid of it as soon as it appears. Small rocks give more points than big ones, but they're also the hardest to hit. And the Atari version had a hyperspace button that got you out of a jam at the cost of reappearing at a random spot, with a chance of landing right on top of a rock. If the game you open has it, save it as a last resort.

Beyond shooting

Asteroid Blast and Pixi Asteroid Rage stay close to the classic, with the ship and the rocks. Other games change the goal. In Asteroid Miner and Belter the asteroid is a source of resources or a backdrop rather than an enemy. And in Pixel Protect Your Planet, Asteroid Shield: Tile-Matching and Comet City, what matters is protecting a planet from whatever is falling.

If you want something like the original, start with Asteroids or Asteroid Blast. If you'd rather have a calmer pace, the mining and exploration games leave more room to think.