Build an Asteroids Clone in Godot: The No-Tutorial Guide
Z
Zack Saadioui
8/11/2025
So You Want to Build Asteroids in Godot? Here's How to Do It Without a Tutorial
Hey everyone, hope you're doing awesome. I've been messing around with Godot for a while now, & one of the classic rites of passage for any game dev is building a clone of a retro game. Asteroids is a PERFECT candidate. It’s simple enough to not be overwhelming, but it has enough moving parts to teach you some really fundamental concepts.
Now, you could just go find a step-by-step tutorial on YouTube. There are plenty of good ones out there. But honestly, where's the fun in that? The real learning happens when you try to figure things out for yourself, when you bang your head against a problem & then have that "aha!" moment.
So, this isn't going to be a "copy this code" kind of guide. Instead, I want to walk you through the thought process of building a game like Asteroids from scratch in Godot. We'll cover the core mechanics, the nodes you'll need, & the logic that ties it all together. Think of it as a conceptual roadmap. You'll still have to do the driving.
By the end, you'll not only have a working Asteroids clone, but you'll also have a much deeper understanding of how Godot works. Ready? Let's dive in.
The Big Picture: Deconstructing Asteroids
Before we write a single line of code, let's break down what Asteroids actually is. At its core, it’s a game with a few key elements:
A Player Ship: It can rotate left & right, thrust forward, & shoot bullets.
Screen Wrapping: When the ship or anything else goes off one side of the screen, it reappears on the opposite side.
Asteroids: They float around randomly. When you shoot a big one, it breaks into smaller ones.
Bullets: Simple projectiles that travel in a straight line & disappear after a certain time or when they hit something.
Collisions: The player's ship can be destroyed by asteroids. Asteroids are destroyed by bullets.
A Score & Lives: You get points for blowing up asteroids & you have a limited number of lives.
(Optional) UFOs: An occasional enemy that flies across the screen & shoots at the player.
That's pretty much it. Each of these is a distinct problem to solve. We'll tackle them one by one.
Setting Up Your Universe: The Godot Project
First things first, you need a new Godot project. The initial setup is pretty straightforward. You'll create a main scene, which will be the root of your game. A good way to think about your scene structure is to have a
1
Game
node (a simple
1
Node
or
1
Node2D
) as the main parent. This
1
Game
node will be responsible for things like spawning asteroids, keeping track of the score, & managing the game state (like "playing" or "game over").
Underneath this
1
Game
node, you'll instance your other scenes: the
1
Player
, the
1
Asteroid
s,
1
Bullet
s, etc. This keeps everything nice & organized.
One of the first things you'll want to set up is your input map. Go to
1
Project > Project Settings > Input Map
. This is where you'll define your actions, like
1
rotate_left
,
1
rotate_right
,
1
thrust
, &
1
shoot
. You can assign keys to these actions (e.g., 'A' for
1
rotate_left
, 'D' for
1
rotate_right
, 'W' for
1
thrust
, & 'Space' for
1
shoot
). Using the input map is way better than hard-coding keys because it lets you or the player easily rebind controls later.
Another crucial setup step is configuring your physics layers. You don't want asteroids to collide with other asteroids, & you don't want the player's ship to immediately collide with the bullet it just fired. Physics layers let you define what can collide with what. For instance, you could have layers for:
Layer 1: Player
Layer 2: Bullets
Layer 3: Asteroids
Then you can set the "mask" for each layer. The player's mask would be set to detect collisions with asteroids, but not bullets. The bullets' mask would be set for asteroids, but not the player. It's like setting up a social network for your game objects.
The Star of the Show: The Player's Ship
The player ship is the most complex object, so it's a good place to start. Create a new scene for your
1
Player
. The root node should probably be a
1
RigidBody2D
. Why a
1
RigidBody2D
? Because it gives you physics built-in. You can apply forces to it, & Godot's physics engine will handle the movement. This is perfect for the floaty, momentum-based movement of the Asteroids ship.
Your
1
Player
scene might look something like this:
1
RigidBody2D
(the root, let's call it
1
Player
)
1
Sprite2D
(or
1
Polygon2D
if you want to draw vector-style graphics)
1
CollisionShape2D
(to define its physical shape)
1
Marker2D
(to mark where bullets should spawn from)
Rotation & Thrust
Now for the fun part: the script. Attach a new GDScript to your
1
Player
node. Here's the logic you'll need in your
1
_physics_process(delta)
function:
Rotation: Check for the
1
rotate_left
&
1
rotate_right
actions. If one is pressed, you'll want to apply a rotational force. You can do this by setting the
1
angular_velocity
of the
1
RigidBody2D
.
Thrust: Check for the
1
thrust
action. If it's pressed, you need to apply a force in the direction the ship is facing. How do you know which direction that is? The ship's
1
rotation
property! A little bit of trigonometry is needed here. You want to apply a force based on the ship's forward vector. In Godot, a rotation of 0 degrees points to the right. So, you can use
1
Vector2.RIGHT.rotated(rotation)
to get a vector pointing in the ship's forward direction. Then you can apply an impulse or a constant force in that direction.
Using
1
delta
in your calculations is SUPER important. It ensures that your game runs at the same speed on all computers, regardless of their framerate.
Pew Pew Pew: Shooting Bullets
To shoot, you'll need a
1
Bullet
scene. This can be a simple
1
Area2D
or another
1
RigidBody2D
with a
1
Sprite2D
& a
1
CollisionShape2D
. In your
1
Player
script, when the
1
shoot
action is pressed, you'll instantiate a
1
Bullet
scene.
You need to set the bullet's initial position & rotation. The position should be at that
1
Marker2D
we added to the
1
Player
scene. This ensures the bullet spawns at the nose of the ship. The rotation should be the same as the player's rotation at the moment of firing.
Then, you'll add the bullet to the main game scene using
1
get_tree().root.add_child(bullet_instance)
. The bullet's own script will then take over, moving it forward in a straight line. You should also add a
1
Timer
to the bullet scene to automatically delete it after a few seconds, so your game doesn't get filled with thousands of stray bullets.
The Great Void: Screen Wrapping
This is a hallmark of classic arcade games. You could try to do this with
1
Area2D
nodes at the edges of the screen, but there's a much simpler way.
In the script for any object that needs to wrap (the player, asteroids, bullets), you can check its
1
position
in the
1
_process
or
1
_physics_process
function. Get the screen size using
1
get_viewport_rect().size
.
The logic is simple:
If
1
position.x
is greater than
1
screen_size.x
, set
1
position.x
to 0.
If
1
position.x
is less than 0, set
1
position.x
to
1
screen_size.x
.
Do the same for the
1
y
position.
This will make your objects magically appear on the other side of the screen when they go off the edge.
Rock & Roll: Creating the Asteroids
Now for our antagonists. The asteroids need to be procedurally generated to some extent. You don't want them to all look & move the same.
Create an
1
Asteroid
scene. Like the player, this will probably be a
1
RigidBody2D
with a
1
Sprite2D
&
1
CollisionShape2D
.
Randomness is Key
In the
1
_ready()
function of your
1
Asteroid
script, you'll want to introduce some randomness:
Appearance: You can have a few different asteroid textures. Use
1
randi() % number_of_textures
to pick a random one to apply to the
1
Sprite2D
.
Rotation: Give it a random initial
1
rotation
.
Movement: Give it a random linear velocity. Pick a random direction & a random speed.
scene, you'll need a spawner. This can just be a function that you call at the start of the game, & maybe on a
1
Timer
to spawn new waves. This function will loop a few times, creating instances of your
1
Asteroid
scene, setting their initial positions to random spots around the edge of the screen, & adding them to the scene tree.
Splitting Up
This is the most satisfying part of Asteroids. When a bullet hits an asteroid, the asteroid should be destroyed & spawn two or three smaller asteroids.
How do we manage this? First, you'll need to handle the collision. When a bullet's
1
Area2D
detects an asteroid's
1
RigidBody2D
entering it, you can emit a signal. The
1
Game
scene (or maybe the asteroid itself) can listen for this signal.
In your
1
Asteroid
script, you can have a variable like
1
size
(e.g., 3 for large, 2 for medium, 1 for small). When an asteroid is hit, you check its
1
size
.
If the
1
size
is greater than 1, you'll create two new asteroid instances.
For each new asteroid, you'll set its
1
size
to be one less than the parent's.
You'll also want to give them a velocity that's related to the parent's velocity, but with a bit of a random kick.
Then, you
1
queue_free()
the original asteroid.
If the
1
size
is 1 (a small asteroid), you just
1
queue_free()
it without spawning new ones.
Don't forget to add to the score each time an asteroid is destroyed! You can do this by having the asteroid emit a signal with its point value when it's destroyed, & have your UI update accordingly.
The Business of Making Games
Now, let's take a quick step back. Imagine you've built this awesome game. It's fun, it's engaging, & people love it. You decide to put it up on a website to show it off. Suddenly, you've got players from all over the world trying it out. They have questions, they find bugs, they have suggestions. How do you manage all that feedback?
This is where a tool like Arsturn becomes incredibly useful. You could embed a custom AI chatbot on your game's webpage. Instead of players having to email you or post on a forum, they could just ask the chatbot. "Hey, how do I get past level 3?" or "I think I found a bug with the UFO." The chatbot, trained on your game's documentation or FAQs, could provide instant answers. It's a fantastic way to handle player support & keep your community engaged 24/7, without you having to be awake at 3 AM answering emails. It helps you focus on what you love – making games – while the chatbot handles the frontline communication.
And if you start thinking about turning your game dev hobby into a business, Arsturn can help there too. You could use a chatbot for lead generation on your portfolio site, or to provide personalized experiences for potential clients or publishers. It's a no-code solution that lets you build a powerful AI assistant trained on your own data. Pretty cool, right?
Putting It All Together: UI & Game State
Okay, back to the code. You're going to need a simple UI to display the score & the number of lives remaining. Godot's UI system is node-based, just like everything else. You can create a
1
CanvasLayer
node in your main scene to hold your UI elements. This ensures the UI stays fixed on the screen & doesn't move with the camera.
Inside the
1
CanvasLayer
, you can add
1
Label
nodes for "Score:" & "Lives:". You'll need to connect your
1
Game
scene's script to these labels to update them. A good way to do this is with signals. When the score changes, the
1
Game
script emits a
1
score_updated
signal with the new score. The UI script listens for this signal & updates the label's text.
Handling Player Death & Respawning
When the player's ship collides with an asteroid, it's game over... for that life, at least. You'll handle this collision just like the bullet-asteroid collision. When the player
1
RigidBody2D
is hit by an asteroid, you'll:
Play an explosion effect (Godot's
1
GPUParticles2D
are great for this!).
Hide the player's ship.
Decrement the player's life count.
Check if lives are greater than 0. If so, start a
1
Timer
for a few seconds to respawn the player. If not, it's game over.
The respawn timer is important. You don't want the player to respawn instantly & immediately get hit by another asteroid. A short delay gives them a chance to get their bearings. You might also want to make the player invincible for a few seconds after respawning. You can do this with another
1
Timer
& by temporarily disabling their collision shape.
You've Got This!
And there you have it. That's the conceptual framework for building Asteroids in Godot. We've broken it down into manageable chunks: player, asteroids, bullets, screen wrap, collisions, & UI.
The key is to tackle one problem at a time. Get the ship moving. Then get it shooting. Then add one asteroid. Then make it break apart. Build it up piece by piece.
You're going to get stuck. You're going to have bugs. Your ship is going to fly off in a weird direction for no apparent reason. That's all part of the process. The Godot documentation is your best friend. The community forums are full of people who have run into the same problems.
I really hope this was helpful. Building a game from the ground up, without just mindlessly following a tutorial, is one of the most rewarding things you can do as a developer. You'll learn SO much more this way.
So go on, fire up Godot, & start building. Let me know what you think, & I'd love to see what you create! Good luck