Asteroids Z is a multiplayer Asteroids with retro-enhanced vector graphics and many ships to choose from, each with different physics-based trade-offs. Heavy starship with big guns vs swift Cobra MK2: who will win?
Rebuilt from scratch in 2026 as a self-contained browser game: Newtonian physics (mass, thrust, torque, recoil, momentum-conserving collisions), four ships, solo waves or a two-player duel on one keyboard. The 2019 technical preview below is what survives of the first attempt.
Technical preview (2019)
The game reached an early development stage before the project went dormant. A technical preview is available below.
Android technical preview
Download the Android preview: asteroids-z.apk
To install an apk from sources other than the Play Store you may need to temporarily disable Google Play Protect: open the Play Store app, tap the Menu button, select “Play Protect”, and disable “Scan device for security threats”.
Background
Lately, after a long break from side projects, I started developing a full-featured multiplayer, real-physics-based, 2D space combat simulator: Asteroids-Z. After more than a decade of mostly professional C++ programming, I built it in Java: partly to remind myself that performance comes from how software is written, not from the language alone. You can write fast software in Java and slow software in C++.
Development
The game is written mostly in Java and runs on Android, iOS, WebGL (browser), macOS, Windows and Linux.
The server is written in Java and is designed making use of fast-paced multiplayer techniques such as client-side prediction, authoritative server reconciliation, entity interpolation and lag compensation. It runs on the Amazon AWS GameLift infrastructure for ease of scale-on-demand.
The development workflow is fully automated thanks to GitLab: SCM, CI/CD, unit testing, code coverage, issue tracking, releases.