Writings of Mass Deduction

At first glance I wouldn’t have given “Asteroid Pooper” much of a chance at being great, but I was surprised by the subtle tactical elements in it that set it apart.

Let’s start by ignoring the silly name, and focusing on the gameplay. Your goal is to collect space dust, compact it into an asteroid, and then release it. The more you release, the more difficult the screen gets to navigate. An interesting element of the game is that whenever you collect enough space dust to release an asteroid that it continues flying in the direction you were going when you released it. This lets you aim them, and if you successfully aim that at other asteroids they’ll drop in size once they collide. Over time you can grind the asteroids back down to space dust, to help keep the number of them on screen manageable. Hitting the same asteroids over and over to eliminate them takes a lot of skill and elevates this 80 Microsoft Point game above being a silly time waster into something that’s a little more interesting. The game also supports two player competitive offline multiplayer, and is a different enough concept that it’s worth checking out.

Here’s what the developer (SirTBeck) has to say about the game:

“Hop in your space ship and clean the galaxy of star dust. Fly solo or challenge a friend to a head-to-head battle!”