Astro Battle

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.

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.

Astro Battle was released in 2004 by Lava Lord Games and was inspired by Star Control. Initially, the game was released for free trial with an expansion pack allowing for much more powerful ships. Initially, Astro Battle was released as a stand-alone application. In 2007, the game had 18,000 subscribers and work on a sequel began.

In 2009, the original was re-released as a web application, accessible from the website. Today, both the original game and the sequel are available for free from the website.

PC World considered Astro Battle in their overview of "15 Great Free Game Sites", noting its use of a top-down 2D view.