Starblast, a frantic online arcade space shooter is now out with Linux support

If you like classic arcade shooters, but fancy something a little extra then Starblast [itch.io, Steam, Official Site] might be a good fit.

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The developer sent over a key, so I've been testing and it's not bad at all. It has various game modes like survival, a team mode where you need to destroy an enemy starbase, a deathmatch mode and an invasion mode. It can support quite a lot of players too, custom games can have up to 120 people on the same map!

I found the survival mode pretty relaxing and what I like about it, is that you can't chat directly to others. You have access to a limited set like "Hello" and "Team", so it doesn't have the kind of toxic behaviour I've seen in a lot of online games. I spent quite a lot of time in the survival mode and managed to find a friend who followed me for a while asking "Team", they then flew around with me gathering resources, attacking anyone who decided to fire at us and it was nice. Still not sure how you actually win the survival mode, since there seems to be no timer and scores just keep going up.

The game could use a little more in the way of explanations, for new users it can be off-putting not really understanding the basics. There's no real help available, unless you dive into the forums. Things like "RCS", which you can toggle, but it's not explained anywhere what it actually does.

In each fresh game you start off at level one, destroying enemies and asteroids will give you more experience allowing you to level up and pick a better ship when you do. On top of that, you also incrementally upgrade your statistics using gems from whatever you manage to blow up. There doesn't seem to be any form of permanent progression, as it's very much a classic arcade shooter to keep everyone on a more level playing field.

It can be played with the Mouse, Keyboard and Gamepad so there's a lot of options for how you feel comfortable with it. I've found using the mouse to be pretty easy.

It's actually pretty fun, will be interesting to see if they continue to update it and if they manage to hold a playerbase for it. With a few tweaks to help newer players, it could be pretty fantastic. You can find on itch.io and Steam.

I've spoken to the developer and given them some feedback, they are really responsive and agreed the need to explain things a little better.

Article updated since publishing with more information.