Rock Blaster

ROCK BLASTER is a fast, glowing vector-arcade shooter. Your little ship is stranded in a field of drifting rocks: shoot them and they split into smaller, faster pieces; clear the field and a bigger wave rolls in. Now and then a flying saucer cruises through, and the small one aims at you, better and better as your score climbs.

Everything is drawn with glowing lines, like an old vector monitor, and every sound is synthesized by the game itself. No installation, no launcher: unzip and play.

Features

• Tight, momentum-based ship handling: rotate, thrust, drift, and hyperspace out of trouble (if you dare)
• Waves that grow one rock at a time, two kinds of flying saucers, extra ship every 10,000 points
• Top-10 high score table with arcade-style 3-letter initials, saved between sessions
• Glowing vector graphics that scale to any window size or fullscreen (borderless)
• Particle effects: sparks and dust from shattered rocks, fiery ship explosions, saucer debris and a thruster trail
• Optional CRT monitor effect (Options > CRT Effect, or F9): curved glass, phosphor glow, a short afterglow behind moving shots and rocks, a hint of color fringing and a vignette. No scanlines, just like a real vector monitor. Off by default
• Fully synthesized sound: shots, explosions, saucer sirens and a heartbeat that speeds up as the field empties
• Full gamepad support (Xbox, PlayStation, Switch Pro and more), with rumble
• Options: master and effects volume, fullscreen, vsync, screen shake, particles, CRT effect
• Pauses automatically when you Alt+Tab away
• Small download, runs on any Windows 10/11 PC with a Direct3D 12 or Vulkan capable GPU

Controls

Action	Keyboard	Gamepad
Rotate	A / D or Left / Right	Left stick or d-pad
Thrust	W or Up	Left stick up, right trigger or d-pad up
Fire	Space	A / Cross (bottom button) or right shoulder
Hyperspace	Shift	Y / Triangle (top button)
Start / confirm	Enter or Space	Start or A / Cross
Pause menu	Esc or P	Start / Options / +
Fullscreen	F11 or Alt+Enter	-
CRT effect on / off	F9	-
Mute	M	View / Share / -

Scoring

Large rock 20 - medium rock 50 - small rock 100 - large saucer 200 - small saucer 1000.

Windows SmartScreen

Windows may show a blue "Windows protected your PC" box the first time you run the game. That's because it isn't code-signed yet, which is normal for small indie games. Click More info, then Run anyway. Installing through the itch.io app usually avoids the prompt.

System requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• A GPU with Direct3D 12 or Vulkan drivers (practically anything from the last ~8 years)
• Keyboard or gamepad

Settings, high scores and the log are stored in %APPDATA%\Ridejock\RockBlaster\.

Credits

Game, code, sound design and art by Ervin Ashley. Made with the Emerald engine and SDL3. Uses spdlog, {fmt}, stb, dr_mp3 and nlohmann/json, and the Share Tech Mono font (SIL Open Font License); their licenses are included in the download (THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.txt).

Also check out

Rock Blaster Rogue, a pixel-art roguelike take on Rock Blaster with bosses, stacking upgrades and unlockable ships.