Argonaut

More than just another Asteroids clone, Argonaut - 2149 has a mining objective, special weapons, and formidable adversaries, while retaining the 2D rock-splitting glory of its vector-based predecessor.

Crystals released from destroyed asteroids can be collected to purchase items that help collect more crystals and defeat space pirates and scavengers.

While it adds some features to the standard gameplay, Argonaut removes others for the good of the user experience. The spaceship the player controls maintains its inertia as things do in a vacuum, but its velocity is capped to prevent leadfoots from shooting off into certain doom. There's also a refillable health gauge, so bonking through smaller rocks and taking a few stray bullets doesn't lead to instant destruction, while the player remains ill-advised to use their vehicle as a battering ram.

Enemies become increasingly plentiful and dangerous as the game progresses; each one is equipped with the same weaponry as the player, or better! (Excluding the scavengers that grab crystals and scamper off.) Thankfully there is also a save feature to protect against periodically poor performance; choose wisely when to save, because there's no going back to a previous save for the game session once it's overwritten.

Sam's Protip: Fellow AI-controlled Argonauts are certainly helpful when it comes to beating back pirates, but they can also take your crystals and subject you to friendly fire!