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Rock Shooter
Rotate, thrust, shoot. Rocks split when hit. Clear every rock without crashing.
Rock Shooter is the canonical physics-on-a-2D-plane-with-momentum arcade game. A triangular ship in the centre of a wraparound playfield rotates, thrusts, and shoots. Rocks drift; a bullet hit splits a large rock into two medium rocks, a medium into two small rocks, a small to dust. Clear every rock without crashing your ship.
The format was invented in 1979 by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg at Atari. The most-recognized name is a registered trademark of Atari, Inc; this page uses Rock Shooter for clear trademark distance. The gameplay shape has been independently reimplemented many times since.
Everything runs in your browser — physics, collision, rendering, score — no server, no library, no install. The only thing kept across reloads is your high score, stored locally. No accounts, no leaderboards, no telemetry.
Controls (keyboard). ← and → rotate the ship. ↑ thrusts forward — the ship keeps drifting after you let go. Space fires a bullet. Shift triggers hyperspace — the ship teleports to a random spot, with a small chance of self-destruction. P pauses and resumes.
Controls (touch). On a phone or tablet, five HUD buttons appear over the corners of the playfield: rotate left / right on the lower-left, thrust and fire on the lower-right, hyperspace at the top-left. Hold a button to repeat.
Rocks split. A bullet hit on a large rock splits it into two medium rocks; a hit on a medium rock splits it into two small rocks; a hit on a small rock destroys it. Score: 20 pts large, 50 pts medium, 100 pts small.
Wrap-around. Every entity wraps at every edge. A ship, rock, or bullet that leaves one side re-emerges from the opposite side at the same speed and angle.
Lives. You start with three. A collision costs one life and respawns the ship in the centre with a brief invulnerability period (the ship flashes). When the third life is lost, the game is over.
Waves. Each new wave starts with more large rocks than the last. The difficulty curve comes from sheer rock density, not faster bullets.
High score
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Best wave
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Note. Stats tracking is unavailable in this browsing mode (private browsing or storage disabled). Gameplay still works for this session but progress isn't saved across reloads.