Astro Battle is a nice multi-directional shooter developed by Lava Lord Games in December 31, 2004. The required operating system is Windows or Linux and the game is having a 2D game format,overhead multi-directional shoot-em-up where players design their own ships.
Gameplay
The objective of Astro Battle is to destroy other player’s ships in multi-player online matches. The game features standard Multi-directional shooter gameplay with several innovations.
Astro Battle’s gameplay deviates from that of traditional Shoot ‘em ups in that, rather than provide pre-designed space ships which are then customised by a limited selection of weapons on pre-selected hardpoints, players must design a star fighter in the included ship editor. Astro Battle gives you a large number of parts, including cockpits, trusses, thrusters, guns, batteries and fusion power reactors, each with their own attributes, and the attributes of spacecraft are determined entirely by the modules used in construction and the arrangement of these modules. Each module has a cost and weight associated with it. Weight affects ship speed and manoeuvrability, and no ship may exceed a certain cost.
Players must take these parts and connect them together via set ‘mount points’ on each module to create viable combat craft.
Reception
PC World considered Astro Battle in their overview of “15 Great Free Game Sites”, noting its use of a top-down 2D view.
Astro Battle has a consistent artistic theme, with heavy use of stylized icons. Beyond this consistency, details of the setting or a detailed plot are never established in-game.
You can play this game here
You have to download the jnlp file first and you must have Java installed on your computer.