Maelstrom is a multidirectional shooter developed by Andrew Welch and released as shareware in November 1992 for Mac OS.

The game was later released as free and open-source software, resulting in ports for other platforms.

The goal is to shoot drifting asteroids with a plasma cannon from a spaceship and avoid being hit by the rocks and other enemies.

The ship is moved by changing its orientation and pressing a key to apply forward thrust.

[5] Welch gave the source code to Sam Lantinga, who created an SVGAlib and later SDL port for Linux and released it in 1995.