A top-down arcade space shooter
Starblast is a fast 2D top-down space shooter where you fly a spaceship, blast asteroids for crystals and use what you collect to upgrade. The ship tree holds 7 tiers and 31 unique ships, each with its own laser patterns and abilities. You can also grab secondary weapons and powers to build offensive or defensive strategies. On top of that there are 10 weapon classes, thousands of maps and ship customization with materials like Titanium, Carbon, Alloy and Gold, laser styles such as Doubled, Lightning and Digital, and badges like Pirate, Invader, Reddit, Youtuber, Paw and Star. Arenas are built with procedural generation, so the star systems and asteroid fields are rarely the same twice.
Playing with your group
Starblast runs on online co-op and online PvP, so your group can team up or fight each other. Team mode splits players into 3 teams, each with a base space station: mine crystals, haul them back to upgrade your station, raid enemy mining runs, assault their stations and destroy their space stations to win. Roles within a team include defending your station, mining, escorting large slow mining ships, hitting enemy missions and assaulting stations. Survival mode is a free-for-all where you mine, upgrade, steal gems and try to be the last survivor. Deathmatch gives you one of two ships per round, and the first player to 12 points takes it. A fourth mode is set to be unveiled on release day. Custom games let you set up private parties or public events with your own rules.
Before you start
Custom games let you tune map size, asteroid patterns, crystal value, asteroid strength, ship speed, starting ship, number of teams and space station size, with more options planned. Deathmatch results feed into the Pro Deathmatch Championship, a permanently running competition with leaderboards. The game is tagged as difficult, so expect a learning curve while you work up the ship tree. One thing to note: buying Starblast on Steam does not include an ECP code for the web version, and Steam purchases only let you play the Steam version.