Deep Space Pirates is a simplistic game, seeing as it was written in under 24 hours for Crispy's inaugural Game in a Day competition. You start off sitting near the wormhole in the middle of the map, guns at the ready, in your little spherical pod-ship. Your goal? Slay the innumerable merchant ships looking to take the wormhole into super-duper space, before they DO take the wormhole into super-duper space! You see, the Deep Space Pirates have managed to encamp themselves along a main trade route, and the fat merchants tend to pass by here with innumerable internets, endangered species, or gold watches, all pieces of plunder that you would quite like to possess. Unfortunately, the merchants aren't entirely stupid (Maybe there's a REASON they keep using this incredibly dangerous trade route, ever thought of that, huh?), and they will hire some mercenaries to travel along with them, protecting them from your pirate hordes.
The controls used to achieve your goal are simple: Hitting left makes you accelerate to the east. Hitting up makes you accelerate north. Down is south, right is west. Clicking on any object fires at it, and clicking on an empty piece of space causes you to fire in the general direction of that piece of space. Running into objects or the edge of the map will cause you to bounce. Being hit by laser fire will reduce your health. When any type of spaceship dies, it drops its wealth in the form of a spinning coin - collect it by running into it.
A few upgrades can be gained by clicking on the 'upgrades' tab in your statpanel and then clicking on the upgrade button. Upgrades cost points, but they do improve the effectiveness of your ship - or just repair the damage those pesky guards may have caused.
A word of warning - crossing the wormhole causes you to be immediately detained and killed by the hideous monster-guards on the other side, so don't try it. Also, the speed of light is constant, you know? Pity that Einstein was wrong about everything else. You can go faster then your lasers, and the result isn't pleasant if you're firing at the time - you'll run straight into your own fire. I suggest not doing that, if you want to live a while.
Additionally, you CAN hurt each other. If you want to hunt down your fellow pirates, do so, by all means. Just remember - there's always a bigger fish.
Happy