Driftrock

Fly a thrust-and-rotate ship around a wrapping field, blasting space rocks that split into smaller pieces until they're gone. Clear every rock to advance, but the field is alive. A few rocks hide a creature that bursts out and chases you, and killing it is required to finish the wave. Loot rocks drop temporary buffs and coins you bank toward a between-wave shop, and a drifting black hole will pull you in and kill you on contact.

• Shoot rocks until they break apart and clear; destroy any monster that emerges.
• Grab loot pickups for buffs like spread, rapid fire, shield or slow.
• Avoid the roaming black hole, its pull is lethal.

• Desktop: Arrow keys to rotate and thrust, Space to fire, H for hyperspace.
• Phone & tablet: keyboard recommended, this game leans on precise thrust and rotation.

• Daily seeded wave layout shared by everyone.
• Practice with fresh fields.

• Look for the faint glint that marks monster and loot rocks, and break them on your terms.
• Keep moving and use hyperspace as a last-ditch escape from the black hole or a closing monster.

Driftrock is a tribute to Asteroids, released by Atari in 1979, designed by Ed Logg and Lyle Rains and drawn in glowing vector lines rather than pixels — which is why the screen looks lit rather than printed.

Rocks split into smaller, faster rocks when shot, so clearing the screen briefly makes it far more dangerous than leaving it alone, and experienced players deliberately keep one large rock alive while they deal with everything else. The ship carries momentum and has no brakes, so stopping means turning around and thrusting back. Hyperspace moves you somewhere random and occasionally drops you inside a rock, which is less a bug than the point.

Driftrock is an original loot-and-ambush take on the vector space-rock shooter, free to play in your browser. Made in-house at PlayPendium.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.