How to play Star Blaster
Your ship fires on its own, so your only job is moving. Steer with the arrow keys or WASD, move the mouse over the game, or drag a finger anywhere on a phone.
Enemies come in waves. Once every ship in a wave is destroyed or has flown past, the next wave starts. Every 5th wave is a boss fight with a big health bar and three phases, and each phase throws a new bullet pattern at you.
You have 3 hearts. A hit costs one heart and makes your ship blink for a moment, and bullets pass through you while it blinks. Every wave you clear, boss waves too, gives one heart back, up to 3. Lose all three and the run is over.
Star Blaster enemies and bosses
Violet darts fly straight down and green weavers snake from side to side, both are easy points. Pink gunships stop near the top and aim right at you, so move once they start to glow. Red darts pause, draw a dotted aim line to your ship, then dive at full speed. Step off that line before they launch.
Gold tanks take many hits, show a health bar and fire a fan of bullets. In return they drop a power-up more than half the time. Every wave gives enemies a bit more health and speed, and from wave 6 even the small violet darts shoot back.
Bosses show up on waves 5, 10, 15 and so on. When a boss drops to two thirds and then one third of its health it clears its bullets and switches to a harder pattern: aimed fans, then spinning spirals, then full bullet rings while it calls in red darts.
Star Blaster power-ups
Destroyed enemies sometimes drop a hexagon power-up. Fly close and it gets pulled into your ship.
Spread shot (cyan) adds angled guns and stacks up to level 3, but every hit you take removes one level. Rapid fire (gold) almost doubles your fire rate for 8 seconds. Shield (blue) wraps you in a bubble for 8 seconds that eats bullets and wrecks anything that rams it. Repair (green) gives back one heart. Bomb (pink) wipes every bullet off the screen and hits all enemies hard.
Picking up spread shot at level 3 or repair at full health gives 500 points instead.
How scoring works in Star Blaster
Each ship has a base value: violet dart 100, green weaver 150, red dart 200, pink gunship 250 and gold tank 600. Every shot that lands on a boss is worth 10 points, and beating it adds a bonus of 5,000 times the boss number, so the second boss is worth 10,000.
Kills less than 1.6 seconds apart build a combo. Every 5 kills in a row raise the multiplier by one, up to x5, and the small bar under your score shows how much time is left. Getting hit resets the combo.
For a higher score, stay low and slide sideways instead of flying into the pack. Take out pink gunships first, then farm the easy darts to keep the chain alive so tanks and gunships land at x4 or x5.
Can you play Star Blaster on a phone?
Yes. It runs in your phone browser with nothing to download. Put a finger anywhere below your ship and drag. The ship stays a little above your finger, so your thumb never hides it.
Tap the pause button in the top right corner to take a break. The game also pauses by itself when you switch apps. Hold the phone upright, the play area is tall just like the screen.