I have been very preoccupied with space lately.  Not in the Feng Shui sense but the vast ever expanding vacuum between celestial bodies sense. I have been telling anybody in earshot how great I think EVE Online is – the checkout girl at Tesco assured me she wasn’t really interested but the cleaner at the office seemed tempted by the offer of a free trial – and now I offer unto you, fans of free games, the delightful mmoAsteroids.

The solo developed space shooter is the work of industry veteran Paul Firth and he has some pretty ambitious plans for it in the long term. At the moment the pre-alpha tech demo is available to play at mmoasteroids.wildbunny.co.uk.

At it’s most basic it is asteroids with friends. You control a coloured triangle zipping around space, by shooting opposing players – it is red vs blue, of course – or destroying asteroids you gain points and the team with the most points wins. However, there are already the seeds of something a little deeper: There are larger more powerful ships that require two players to operate – requiring teamwork to use effectively and, depending on funding, there could be a lot more to come according to Paul:

Imagine being able to go on MMO style quests with your friends, working together to battle through huge shared worlds which resemble those old shoot-em-ups like RType or Gradius, destroying each gun of a massive enemy ship before taking out the power-cell in its centre.

Or imagine all working together in teams to pilot a large mecha ship (similar but more advanced than the one in the current game) all the way to the opposing teams base, avoiding the automatic gun turrets that they placed there earlier and their line of defensive players, to drop some explosive charges right on the core part of their base.

Sounds grand. mmoAsteroids is already perfect for a quick blast of fun and it looks like there will be plenty to look forward to. If you’re a fan you can buy an avatar to use in game which will help fund the development. Head over here to check it out.

What do you think of mmoAsteroids?[starrater tpl=10]