Cannons Lasers Rockets is a free space exploring game available on Steam for Linux and Windows with 3D graphics and futuristic space environments. The game was released on February 4, 2014, uses the powerful Unity Engine and takes place in various space environments, with 2D battles and a simple gameplay idea: all you need to win are three weapons, obviously cannons, lasers and yes, you guessed it, rockets.

CLR is a space combat MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game which thrives for gameplay simplicity, with controls to move your ship in two dimensions using WASD and a fire mode. It comes with dozens of maps and space ships, as well as different missions.

A usual game starts with two teams which have to wipe out the other by destroying their base, while also protecting their own. A good challenge is comprised of the alien cocoons located on the map, which will start attacking everything within reach, also attacking the closest base to them. The swarm of the so-called “hornets” contained in the cocoon only attack once the shield of their cocoon has been destroyed by either of the human teams. This contributes to a nice tactical gameplay.

The game runs in windowed mode, and has few configuration options, like mouse sensitivity and vertical sync. Default keyboard bindings can also be changed. That’s pretty much where configuration options stop.

You can start a skirmish game to play online versus other players, or for the first-time users, have a look at the tutorial, which will guide you through pretty much everything you need to know in order to start playing.

One of the drawbacks was that finding an online game is a bit hard, since the lobby seems to be populated by very few players.

While in-game, press F10 to open the main menu (Escape doesn’t seem to work) and F1 for getting help. A full guide to CLR is available here.

CLR is also available on Desura, the other popular, Linux-friendly gaming platform.