Word Blaster: typing shooter game, online free

Yes. Word Blaster on Util.Ninja is completely free, with no sign-up, no download and no in-app purchases. It runs in your browser on computers, tablets and phones, and your stars, scores and badges are saved on your device.

Ships fly towards your space station, and every ship carries a word. Type the word: the first letter locks your laser onto that ship, every correct letter fires a shot and the last letter destroys it. A ship that reaches the station costs one of your three shields. Clear the waves before your shields run out.

When you type a letter without a lock, your laser picks the closest ship whose word starts with that letter. The lock stays until the ship explodes. Press Backspace to drop the lock and switch to another ship (its word starts again). New ships try to start with letters no other ship on screen uses, so the first letter is almost always enough.

Nothing breaks: you simply keep typing the right letter. But a wrong key resets your combo, and the combo multiplies your points by up to 2.5 times, so accuracy pays.

From wave 3 on, a glowing ship crosses the top of the screen once per wave. Type its word to collect what it carries: a smart bomb (press Enter to destroy every ship on screen), a slow-motion field that slows the fleet for six seconds, or a shield repair.

The 10th wave of every sector is a boss: a huge mothership that hovers at the top and keeps launching drones. Its hull is a series of long words and phrases; type them one after another while dealing with its drones. Destroy it to clear the sector.

Splitters break into two small drones when you destroy them. Darts, from the Emerald Drift sector on, are tiny, very fast ships with short words. Bombers are big and slow but carry long words or whole phrases.

New kinds join the fleet sector by sector: weavers swing in wide curves, shades fade in and out like ghosts (their words always stay visible), orbiters circle your ship as they close in, stingers zigzag at high speed and armoured tanks crawl in with the longest words. Every sector also has its own alien design: raider jets, swarm bugs, crystal shards, storm mechs, void creatures, ice spears, flame arrows and a saucer armada.

Your ship changes as your score grows in every game: the Scout becomes a Twin Blaster at 1,500 points, a Wing Striker at 5,000, a Plasma Lancer at 10,000, a Drone Carrier with orbiting drones at 18,000 and finally the Nova Dreadnought at 30,000. Each form has its own hull, guns and laser colour. The upgrades change the look and the lasers, not the rules, so scores stay fair on the leaderboards.

Each campaign sector gives up to three stars per difficulty. One star for clearing it, two if you lost no more than one shield, and three for losing no shield at all with 95% accuracy or better. There are 72 stars to collect across the 8 sectors in Easy, Normal and Hard.

Endless never stops: the fleet grows and speeds up wave after wave, the sectors change every ten waves and a mothership arrives every tenth wave. The Daily mission is the same, but the fleet is identical for everyone each day. Both have free leaderboards for today, this week and all time.

Yes. Word Blaster shows its own on-screen keyboard on phones and tablets, with the next letter of your target lit up, a space bar for phrases, a bomb key and a key to drop your lock. The screen works in portrait and landscape.

Easy uses slow ships and short, simple words, many of them using only the first keys taught in the Typing Dojo. Normal is the standard game. Hard sends faster ships, bigger waves and long words and phrases. Endless and the Daily mission always use Normal rules so that leaderboards are fair.

Yes. It trains exactly what speed typing needs: recognising a word at a glance and typing it without looking at the keyboard, under a little pressure. The words are the most frequent words in English, and your speed in words per minute and your accuracy are shown after every game.

No. Your progress is stored in your browser on this device. Leaderboards are optional: you choose a nickname only if you want your score on the board, and you can delete your scores at any time.

Yes: lasers, explosions, alarms and an original synth soundtrack for the sectors, all made in your browser with the Web Audio API. Sound and music can be switched off separately in Settings, and the game pauses itself when you switch tabs.