‘I want everybody to know the fun of developing a game. If it becomes easier, more people can enjoy it.’
Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (Jan. 3 – Jan. 9, 2023).
Kenta Cho is known as one of Japan's most prolific independent developers, alongside Ikiki. A visit to his website shows hundreds of games, created over the last decades. Perhaps because it is a hobby for the one working at Toshiba, his various titles are always experimental, to the point where they have an almost scientific quality to them, like successive dives into the recesses of game design to find, ultimately, something new. This is all the more remarkable given that all of his work is open source, to the extent that his idea for Tumiki Fighters (2004) was the unquoted inspiration for Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy (2008). Cho anchors his experiments to the exploration of concepts borrowed from the arcade or from daily life. The Kibasen takes the eponymous activity beloved by Japanese children and uses doodles as graphics, emphasising the naivety of the idea. The River Meguro invokes the image of cherry blossom petals floating on the surface of the water during the spring hanami.
Torus Trooper is perhaps more prosaic in its inspiration. It derives from the tube shooter concept introduced by Tempest (1983) for the arcade. The principle is to place the player on the inner surface of a cylinder – or torus – allowing them to move around very freely, while remaining confined within the geometric space of the level. In Tempest's heyday, the graphics were based on metal wires. For technical and ergonomic reasons, it was decided to keep the camera fixed, because rotating the level would make the player feel nauseous. For others, the notion of having a fixed ship and sliding the level was significant, giving rise to titles like Tube Panic (1984), N2O: Nitrous Oxide (1998) or iS – internal section (1999).
Kenta Cho's title follows this general premise, but injects a new spin on it with its staging. The emphasis of the game is on speed, and to emulate the effect, the stage is just a section of a tube, so that some stretches are open and look like a conventional track. Since the rest of the level can be seen on the horizon, the curves fly by at breakneck speed as the player tries to avoid the various opposing projectiles however they can. There's no question of going slowly, as the game is about survival. The timer runs out continuously and the only way to add precious seconds is to finish a level or kill a boss. This design pushes the player to speed up, whatever it takes, swept away by the sensation of velocity and the psychedelic music.
Torus Trooper succeeds in remaining perfectly readable – the choice of polyhedra, reminiscent of Geometry Wars (2003), to represent projectiles and enemies works wonderfully – despite the intense on-screen action, owing to the clever placement of the camera, which pulls back and fixes on the horizon as the player accelerates. Hitting the railings never slows down the player and it helps maintain a rare speed frenzy. In this respect, the title is much more akin to F-Zero GX (2003) than iS – internal section. There's something magical about breaking 6,000 km/h and driving through projectile barrages as if they were nothing: it's the same feeling as being on a bullet train and seeing the landscape go by very slowly, because it's so far away, while the electricity pylons, much closer, go by at full speed. Torus Trooper has such a unique cathartic quality, almost inviting contemplation: the transitions between levels only alter the music and the colour of the tube, but the shift in tempo is so pleasing.
The concept is flawless and is seamlessly implemented. In addition to standard blasts, the player can use the alternate shot, which pulverises incoming enemy projectiles into dust and explodes at its point of impact. Something about the flow of this attack is incredibly pleasing and works every time. It's hard to pinpoint what in Torus Trooper works so well. The game's design is minimalist and elegant: it reminds me of the Montreal's Biosphere (1967), whose steel structure is surprisingly simple, hiding no artifice from the visitor. Torus Trooper's little lie may be that it doesn't appear to be a torus; but who knows? The infinity of the layout and the random generation of curves and enemies make it impossible to be sure of this fact, and there is a poetry in imagining that the ship is just running on the same loop until the timer stops. In a way, the game would seem to be vain; or rather, the point is simply to have fun. In Kenta Cho's own words: "it is very fun to think about a new game mechanism in my head but that is not enough to test whether a player is going to have fun, playing that game' [1]. This centrality of enjoyment strikes as the primary strength of Kenta Cho's titles and Torus Trooper is perhaps one of his most accomplished manifestations of this idea.
__________
[1] Quote Unquote, The Last and Final Word: Kenta Cho, consulted on January 3, 2023.
Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (Jan. 3 – Jan. 9, 2023).
Kenta Cho is known as one of Japan's most prolific independent developers, alongside Ikiki. A visit to his website shows hundreds of games, created over the last decades. Perhaps because it is a hobby for the one working at Toshiba, his various titles are always experimental, to the point where they have an almost scientific quality to them, like successive dives into the recesses of game design to find, ultimately, something new. This is all the more remarkable given that all of his work is open source, to the extent that his idea for Tumiki Fighters (2004) was the unquoted inspiration for Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy (2008). Cho anchors his experiments to the exploration of concepts borrowed from the arcade or from daily life. The Kibasen takes the eponymous activity beloved by Japanese children and uses doodles as graphics, emphasising the naivety of the idea. The River Meguro invokes the image of cherry blossom petals floating on the surface of the water during the spring hanami.
Torus Trooper is perhaps more prosaic in its inspiration. It derives from the tube shooter concept introduced by Tempest (1983) for the arcade. The principle is to place the player on the inner surface of a cylinder – or torus – allowing them to move around very freely, while remaining confined within the geometric space of the level. In Tempest's heyday, the graphics were based on metal wires. For technical and ergonomic reasons, it was decided to keep the camera fixed, because rotating the level would make the player feel nauseous. For others, the notion of having a fixed ship and sliding the level was significant, giving rise to titles like Tube Panic (1984), N2O: Nitrous Oxide (1998) or iS – internal section (1999).
Kenta Cho's title follows this general premise, but injects a new spin on it with its staging. The emphasis of the game is on speed, and to emulate the effect, the stage is just a section of a tube, so that some stretches are open and look like a conventional track. Since the rest of the level can be seen on the horizon, the curves fly by at breakneck speed as the player tries to avoid the various opposing projectiles however they can. There's no question of going slowly, as the game is about survival. The timer runs out continuously and the only way to add precious seconds is to finish a level or kill a boss. This design pushes the player to speed up, whatever it takes, swept away by the sensation of velocity and the psychedelic music.
Torus Trooper succeeds in remaining perfectly readable – the choice of polyhedra, reminiscent of Geometry Wars (2003), to represent projectiles and enemies works wonderfully – despite the intense on-screen action, owing to the clever placement of the camera, which pulls back and fixes on the horizon as the player accelerates. Hitting the railings never slows down the player and it helps maintain a rare speed frenzy. In this respect, the title is much more akin to F-Zero GX (2003) than iS – internal section. There's something magical about breaking 6,000 km/h and driving through projectile barrages as if they were nothing: it's the same feeling as being on a bullet train and seeing the landscape go by very slowly, because it's so far away, while the electricity pylons, much closer, go by at full speed. Torus Trooper has such a unique cathartic quality, almost inviting contemplation: the transitions between levels only alter the music and the colour of the tube, but the shift in tempo is so pleasing.
The concept is flawless and is seamlessly implemented. In addition to standard blasts, the player can use the alternate shot, which pulverises incoming enemy projectiles into dust and explodes at its point of impact. Something about the flow of this attack is incredibly pleasing and works every time. It's hard to pinpoint what in Torus Trooper works so well. The game's design is minimalist and elegant: it reminds me of the Montreal's Biosphere (1967), whose steel structure is surprisingly simple, hiding no artifice from the visitor. Torus Trooper's little lie may be that it doesn't appear to be a torus; but who knows? The infinity of the layout and the random generation of curves and enemies make it impossible to be sure of this fact, and there is a poetry in imagining that the ship is just running on the same loop until the timer stops. In a way, the game would seem to be vain; or rather, the point is simply to have fun. In Kenta Cho's own words: "it is very fun to think about a new game mechanism in my head but that is not enough to test whether a player is going to have fun, playing that game' [1]. This centrality of enjoyment strikes as the primary strength of Kenta Cho's titles and Torus Trooper is perhaps one of his most accomplished manifestations of this idea.
__________
[1] Quote Unquote, The Last and Final Word: Kenta Cho, consulted on January 3, 2023.