Kenta Cho has always focused on simplicity in design, interface, and graphics, and Torus Trooper is no exception. It weighs in at a whopping 7.7 mb, it won't clutter your hard drive and, as it runs straight from an executable, won't add anything to your registry involving installing and whatnot.

Upon opening the game, the first thing you'll notice is the lack of music on the title screen. The interface is extremely simple, and it lends itself well to the title. To the left you'll see your latest replay shot in cinematic angles, and the main menu, which is off to the right of the replay window, only consists of three buttons labeled Normal, Medium, and Extreme. Each mode is fairly easy to start as the only difficulty is how fast the enemies ramp up in aggressiveness and bullets. The hardcore shmup fan should probably play on Extreme, while the casual everyday player is probably more suited to Normal. Either way, prepare for some disorientation, no matter the difficulty.

Torus Trooper, you see, takes place on the inside of a torus. This causes the player to constantly be swinging from side to side down long curving tubes while attacking enemies and being shot at. Not only that, but gunfire and enemies will follow the twists and turns of the cylinder, making it hard to discern where things are going most of the time. The reason it's fine, though, is because the gameplay is fast. One of the fastest shmups I've ever played. You control your speed by pressing up and down on the keyboard, and at your fastest you can get going really, really fast. Completely stages in seconds sort of fast. But it's absolutely necessary, as the whole affair is, in fact, timed.

You start out with a set amount of time, and have to make your way through as many levels as possible in that set time. Thankfully, though, you can add time to your clock fairly easy and you have infinite lives (every death just reduces your timer by 15 seconds). It just involves blitzing as fast as possible through the levels. The bosses at the end of each segment are the enemies that give you time if you destroy them, making them vitally important to continue playing the game. They can either 30 seconds or 45 seconds when they die. This puts a lot of focus on the player blitzing through the levels, as a time-adding enemy occurs after every 100 normal kills. You can keep track of this in the bottom left, where it shows your current kill/needed ratio. You can also gain 15 seconds by reaching a certain score, which is indicated under your current score.

Speaking of killing, this game has extremely simple firing mechanics. Consisting of only 2 buttons, the player can either blast slim shots at the enemy or release a charge shot through them. Each has their own place, though, which makes it nice. Bullets are more for spread out enemies, while the charge shot travels through enemies and bullets, accumulating combos and points for everything it removes from existence. For a great score, the player has to balance comboing with the charge shot and killing masses of enemies with the default shot.

The graphics are simple but hypnotic. Consisting almost entirely of simple geometric shapes and uncomplicated colors, everything stands out in the world, making it simultaneously extremely easy to play and very hypnotic to continue playing. The shift in colors between stages are even enough to make someone continue to play, disregarding the high score down in the bottom. Enemies are always an extremely simple triangular shape, and bosses are always a larger triangular shape that continually fire masses of bullets.

The sounds and music are nothing major, but nothing to be sneezed at either. They fit the abstract nature of the game, bringing to mind something more akin to erasing the enemy ships instead of blowing them apart. The music itself is very techno oriented, changing with each shift in landscape of the torus, which helps keep things fresh for all players. Even so, a little more variety in the music, both by adding some at the title screen and by adding more tracks in-game, would be nice.

There's all sorts of nice little gameplay innovations as well. For example, the player can instantly jump to the last stage of whatever difficulty he finished the stage on. For example, if someone played to level 10 on Normal and shut the game down, when they start the game again there will be a "level 10" option under the Normal difficulty button for them to jump to the last level with. It's very much appreciated, especially since, like a normal shmup, there is no saving except for high-scores. Another innovation is the use of extremely small hitboxes on both bullets and player ships in a 3D game.

Torus Trooper is one of Kenta Cho's better games and, if you are an arcade gamer, will probably remind you of the classic Tempest. Be warned that the game will probably cause motion sickness in those that are susceptible to it, but that is the only possible problem. You can download the game right off our very own download section or from the official site. Let us know your best score in the comments!

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