Beltbreaker started as a test of what a local AI model could write on its own. The code it produced did not run at all, so I rewrote it, and somewhere along the way it stopped being a test and turned into the game I wanted to keep playing: an old-school arcade miner with a long game hiding behind the first rock.

You start with a small mining ship next to Halcyon Station, at the edge of a belt that runs ten zones deep. Every rock is cut where your shots land, so the craters, splits and crumbs are real, and whatever breaks off is ore you can fly through and carry home. Further out the rocks get harder, the ore gets richer, and the belt stops being friendly.

What is in it

Mining that answers back. Twelve kinds of rock, each with its own hardness and ore: volatile rocks that explode, ice comets that melt in your hold, crystals that shatter, armoured shells with a core inside, derelict ships to cut open for salvage. Lasers, beams, drills, shard cannons and missiles all cut differently.

A refinery and a lab. Ore becomes alloys, alloys buy upgrades. Only steel is known at the start; the rest is learned in the lab by mixing materials in the right proportions, and eleven secret alloys are never listed anywhere.

Ships to grow into. Twelve hulls from the starter miner to a battleship with a twin railgun down its spine, every module engineered from one to five stars. Thrust against mass sets your speed, so a full hold flies slower than an empty one.

Trouble. Bandits from the fifth zone out, their fortified outpost, the Warlord who carries the key you need, and something very large at the bottom of the belt.

A clock. Building the Jump Drive ends a run, and the time it took goes on the high score board, next to the boards for rocks broken and bandits destroyed. A run counts only with a name, and a save that was edited outside the game does not count at all.

On Android

Landscape, with a joystick that appears under your thumb, two fire buttons and your items along the bottom. Saves stay on the phone; you can export one through the share menu as a backup.

About ads. The Android version has ads, but only ones you ask for. A Bonuses tab offers things like a faster refinery or a free tow home for watching one short ad, and running out of fuel far from home offers the same as a choice. Nothing plays on its own, nothing is required to finish the game, and runs that used bonuses are marked on the high scores. The ads come from Google, who show their own consent screen in Europe before any ad loads; the privacy policy says what they collect. This site itself stays as it is: no ads.

The game was written in plain JavaScript on a canvas, with every sound synthesised live rather than played from a file.