Game review
Astroblast
8 / 10
- Developer
- Frank Force
- Publisher
- Frank Force (LittleJS Arcade)
- Released
- 1 January 2026
- Platforms
- Web browser (desktop and mobile)
- Genre
- Arcade / Shooter
- Monetisation
- Free, no ads, no in-game purchases
- Players
- None
The short version
Astroblast is exactly what its own title screen calls it — "a LittleJS prototype" — but it's a remarkably complete one: a straight, confident Asteroids clone with glowing vector rocks, screen-shake and hit-flash effects, and a full rotate/thrust/fire/hyperspace control scheme. What matters most for this shelf is that it's genuinely playable with thumbs, confirmed by testing rather than assumed: the on-screen virtual joystick and four-button pad render as a large, generously-spaced overlay at the bottom of the phone screen, and dragging the stick visibly rotated the ship while the fire button produced a visible hit effect and a real score increase in testing. The one caveat worth knowing is that the game engine locks its canvas to a fixed 1920x1080 (16:9) resolution, so on a tall phone the actual starfield renders in a letterboxed strip in the middle of the screen — but unlike some other candidates with this same fixed-canvas problem, the touch controls here are NOT confined to that small strip; they occupy proper full-size touch targets below it, so the small viewing window doesn't translate into cramped, fiddly controls.
Biggest strengths
- Touch controls confirmed functional with real synthetic input, not inferred from source — a drag on the on-screen stick visibly rotated the ship, and repeated taps on the fire button produced a visible hit-flash effect on an asteroid
- The virtual gamepad renders as a large, well-spaced overlay positioned in the lower half of the phone screen, independent of the small letterboxed game view above it — meaning the controls stay comfortably thumb-sized even though the visible play area is compact
- Classic, correctly-implemented Asteroids feel: inertia-based thrust, screen-wrap, asteroids that split into smaller fragments on impact, and a hyperspace escape option, confirmed on desktop with a real score increase (0 to 20) from keyboard input
Biggest weaknesses
- The game locks its canvas to a fixed 1920x1080 resolution, so on a portrait phone the actual starfield and asteroids render in a letterboxed strip roughly a quarter of the screen tall, with black bars above and below for the whole session
- Explicitly labeled "A LittleJS prototype" on its own title screen — a solid, functional demo of the engine's arcade template rather than a game with its own distinct hook beyond Asteroids
- A single endless wave-survival loop with no separate levels or bosses seen in testing; likely a short-session game rather than one with long-term depth
Who it's for: Arcade and Asteroids fans who want a clean, free vector-shooter fix on any device
Our recommendation: A tight, correctly-controlled Asteroids clone — the small on-screen playfield on phones is a real but minor tradeoff against genuinely good touch controls
8 / 10
Astroblast doesn't pretend to be anything other than what its own title screen says: "A LittleJS prototype." It's a clean, confident Asteroids clone — rotate and thrust a small ship through a field of drifting vector-outline rocks, shoot them into smaller pieces, and use a hyperspace jump to escape a tight spot — built to show off the LittleJS engine's arcade template rather than to reinvent the genre. Judged as an arcade shooter on its own terms, it's tight and correctly made.
Touch controls confirmed, not assumed
The most important thing to verify for this shelf is whether a phone player can actually drive the ship with their thumbs, and that was tested directly rather than taken on the strength of the touchGamepadEnable = true line in the source. On a simulated 390×844 touch phone, dragging the on-screen analog stick produced a visible change in the ship's facing angle between frames, and repeated taps on the fire button produced a visible hit-flash effect on a nearby asteroid, matching an earlier discovery pass's own confirmed score change from 0 to 70. On desktop, arrow keys and the space bar drove the same ship through a full rotate-thrust-fire sequence and pushed the score from 0 to 20 in testing, with a clear hit-flash effect on the asteroid that took the shot. Zero console errors, zero page errors, and zero failed requests across every run on either device.
A cramped view, but not cramped controls
The one real wrinkle: the game calls setCanvasFixedSize(vec2(1920, 1080)), locking its visible play area to a 16:9 rectangle regardless of the device. On a portrait phone that means the actual starfield renders in a strip roughly a quarter of the screen's height, confirmed directly via canvas.getBoundingClientRect() (390×219 CSS pixels, centered in the middle of an 844px-tall viewport). That's a real cosmetic limitation worth knowing about. What keeps it from being a bigger problem — and what separates it from other candidates seen with this same fixed-canvas habit — is that the virtual joystick and fire buttons are NOT drawn to scale with that small canvas. They render as a full-size overlay anchored near the bottom of the actual device screen, well below the letterboxed play area, so thumbs get proper full-sized targets even though the starfield they're aiming at is compact. It's a smaller window into the action than ideal, but not a smaller control surface.
Where that leaves it
An 8.0 reflects a correctly-built, genuinely touch-playable Asteroids clone: real inertia, real screen wrap, real asteroid splitting, and — confirmed by testing rather than assumed — real touch and keyboard controls that both produced actual gameplay changes. It loses a little for being exactly what it says it is, a prototype rather than a game with its own twist, and for the letterboxed phone view. Free, MIT-licensed by its author, and worth a few minutes on any device.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Touch controls confirmed functional with real synthetic input, not inferred from source — a drag on the on-screen stick visibly rotated the ship, and repeated taps on the fire button produced a visible hit-flash effect on an asteroid
- The virtual gamepad renders as a large, well-spaced overlay positioned in the lower half of the phone screen, independent of the small letterboxed game view above it — meaning the controls stay comfortably thumb-sized even though the visible play area is compact
- Classic, correctly-implemented Asteroids feel: inertia-based thrust, screen-wrap, asteroids that split into smaller fragments on impact, and a hyperspace escape option, confirmed on desktop with a real score increase (0 to 20) from keyboard input
- Clean vector-outline art style with glow and hit-flash effects that read well at both the compact phone size and the full desktop canvas
- Genuinely MIT licensed by the author, Frank Force, with a real LICENSE file in the repository
- Zero console errors, zero page errors, and zero failed requests across every test on both phone and desktop
Cons
- The game locks its canvas to a fixed 1920x1080 resolution, so on a portrait phone the actual starfield and asteroids render in a letterboxed strip roughly a quarter of the screen tall, with black bars above and below for the whole session
- Explicitly labeled "A LittleJS prototype" on its own title screen — a solid, functional demo of the engine's arcade template rather than a game with its own distinct hook beyond Asteroids
- A single endless wave-survival loop with no separate levels or bosses seen in testing; likely a short-session game rather than one with long-term depth