What do you get when you combine Spy Hunter, Wipeout, and Tempest all in one game? You get Torus Trooper. I came across this gem of a game while reading the latest issue of PC Gamer. Stuck in as almost nothing more than a footnote, this game is the latest PC game to come out of some Japanese guy’s nose.
As the magazine put it, “every time a Japanese guy blows his nose, a cool PC game comes out of it.” Torus Trooper defintely quenches my recent thirst for a good game.
While the home page for Torus Trooper doesn’t seem like much, and frankly, doesn’t tell you much about the game, trust me when I say this game is worth the quick download and quick install. It runs on Windows and just about any PC should be able to run it. I ran it first on my laptop and then moved to the big boy upstairs for even more rock-n-roll.
Torus Trooper (TT) combines the speed of the old space racers like Wipeout with the concept behind Spy Hunter and the dizzying movement of Tempest with a little bit of Gyruss thrown in. Trooper has a classic arcade feel that can’t be mistaken.
There’s no story to worry about with this one. You’re in a space ship and you’re trying to shoot everything while not getting blown up in the process. You have two buttons to worry about: your big gun and your bigger gun. The normal gun will shoot anything and everything, but the bigger gun will kill twice as much a add multipliers to your score.
What? Score?
Yes, a big draw behind this game besides being simple is it revolves around your ability to get a high score. You have no one to beat buy yourself.
The less you die, the better score you get. You have a set time to start with. When time reaches zero your game is over. You can die as many times as you like while you have time left, but every time you die, your time limit goes down by 15 seconds. To combat this, the more bad guys you kill and the more levels you pass, the more time is added to your limit. Even on the first try before I understood what did what, I was able to stay alive long enough to get to level 3.
The rules aside, TT does many things right in terms of making a good game.
- It’s simple. You make your ship go and shoot. You don’t have to worry about where to go or why. Just move your ship randomly and you can do well. Few controls make it easy to play.
- It looks good. Some might consider it primitive, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The “basic” graphics no only let the game play very fast, anything more would be even more distracting. The game moves so fast you would miss any pretty backgrounds anyway.
- It sounds good. Simple sounds with some present-but-not-obvious techno music make this one easy on the ears but not boring.
- You die fast. And I don’t me you die often, but when you die you get a new ship instantly and keep on going. There isn’t any fancy death cut scene to suffer through. You know you’ve died, it doesn’t need to rub it in.
- Auto-save. When your game time runs out, TT automatically saves your last spot by level. Each time you can start where you left off or start from any spot prior. Of course, a new game means you start with a score of zero.
- High score. Again, the goal of the game is a high score. No puzzles to beat or maps to make. Just quick skillz to make that score six figures and beyond.
As of this writing, I’ve only played the game for about a hour, so I’m not sure if there is an end or if levels just keep going and going. Eitherway, much like Pac-Man, there’s probably a point where you just can’t beat and it all comes back down to score.
If you are a gamer, or were a gamer, you owe it to yourself to at least try this game. With any free time I have, I am considering setting up a Torus Trooper scores page where others can upload their high score screen shots. Keep an eyeball out for that.
God bless Japanese guys and their sneezes.
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Installing and playing Torus Trooper
- Download the ZIP file from the TT home page or from the Toast download
- Extract all the files using the folders it has (/tt/)
- Run the tt.exe file
When the game starts, use Left and Right arrow keys to pick your difficulty. Normal is a good place to start
- Use Z to fire your gun
- Up arrow sets throttle to fast; Down arrow throttle to slow. Your throttle stays where you leave it, so you don’t have to constantly hold Up or Down.
- Use X to fire your big gun. The longer you hold it down, the bigger the shot gets and the more baddies it kills. But using the X gun slows you down big time.
- Hit Escape to quit
