Knights of the Round Torus by madjackmcmad
Meteor launching team building arcade action! Clear the roads and defend the citizens of a magical torus for as long as you can.

- Time meteor launches for maximum impact and high scoring chains.
- Deal with ten different enemy types that fly, bounce, teleport, and use magic
- Travel to peaceful towns, noble keeps and desert temples, all in a convenient loop.
- Spend gold to hire allies and upgrade guards.
- Let your allies head off to adventure! Pick them up on the next loop and they'll grow in power.
- Dynamic music that changes with party size and danger level.
- Clicktastic single button gameplay. That's not the theme but OK!
- Dunk on your potato friends with real live Leaderboards, powered by Dreamlo

DocJekyll and I decided to team up this time around, though we only had 48 hours to do the work. We are submitting this to the Jam but used the Compo time constraints, please take note of our courage and valor.
The idea was riffing off of Missile Command, an arcade classic. Enemies approach, you fire shots with a travel time and a lasting damage zone, trying to scoop up as many targets as you can in one hit. Things get hectic before too long, with your team filling up with pirates, archers, and axemens, all trying to clear out an array of ever more mobile and clever enemies.
Letting enemies pass you will eventually bring you defeat. Waves are trips between towns, and if you begin a wave having let too many enemies pass you in the wave prior, you are in a sudden death mode where only a handful of misses can end the game. If you make it through, some of the pressure is off, so keep at it.
Sometimes your hired allies will ask to leave the party and go on a quest. If you manage to make it through a whole loop and return to where you left them, they'll rejoin you with vastly improved power. Or, you could just sacrifice one of them at the blood altar in case you're doing really poorly and need to take some heat off.
Every note of music was from Doc's laboratory. He actually wrote ten layered tracks that blend in and out as the party size changes, towns are visited, and the danger level increases.
Some of the art is derived from Oryx's excellent Tiny Fantasy set. Very little was used as-is: we animated, modified, and built all new content out of the base. However, Oryx's work was absolutely a springboard for us and so we've recused ourselves from the Graphics category.


| Youtube | https://triger-mountain.itch.io/knights-of-the-round-torus |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/knights-of-the-round-torus |
Ratings
| Overall | 293th | 3.9⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 208th | 3.9⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 390th | 3.7⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 829th | 3.6⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 130th | 4.025⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 477th | 3.125⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 855th | 3.342⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 7🗳️ | 8🗨️ |
Took me a while to get the hang of the frogs, the mechanic of trying to get direct hits is great fun. and i loved building up the squad of little dudes, so I did feel a lil guilty sacrficing them for faster fireballs!
It was too difficult for my taste though. There was total chaos on my screen at all times, and some of the monsters were way too fast to even notice. That got me a bit frustrated and I quit quickly.
Overall, it's not my cup of tea gameplay-wise, but it's very impressive content-wise. Also, the "Totally worth it" button on ally sacrifice made me crack a big smile.
I refuse to ever sacrifice my little dudes.
@fiquem Thank you! I'm with you on not sacrificing them -- it's a viable gameplay choice, but as I was coding the spray of gibs I felt immediate guilt.
@letterafterz Thank you very much. Doc worked really hard on the music and I think it's killer. Everything just flows.
@all-y'all: It *is* a touch difficult isn't it. Technically I still have a few hours to tone it down, hmmmmmm 🤔🤔🤔🤔
After I failed once and restarted, I encountered a guy I couldn't afford, but when I clicked "purchase", he seemed to join me anyway. Not sure if that was a bug, or if someone else just joined.
Difficulty felt about right, if it was any easier I'd probably still be playing and my mouse arm would be hurting...
:) You are completely right. I wanted to get the cancel sound in but was very tired and ran out of time. I'll get it in later after judging, I think this game is neat and want to kick it around some more.
When you're out of meteors it felt unsatisfing. (obviously) I wished for some upgrades to raise those numbers a bit so I can shot more often. The more enemies appear I want to click more but here comes the master-the-mechanics into place. But I'm not good with this so all I want is firing more meteors on this lovley planet.
To make it short: Great music, great art and a gameplay loop that is addictive but could be even more addictive if I could fire more stuff out of my wand (or from the sky).
Really great game, pixel art is gorgeous! Did find it a bit tricky to hit the birds, couldn't figure out how to get them without the helpers.

@clemonades Thank youuuu!
@meskaline Thank you! DocJekyll really crushed it didn't he?
Go job !
I loved the homage to the old games of this style with the character moving across the screen at the end of a round before each village.
If I had one area I'd love to see improvement, it would be to have more mercenaries to hire (who by the way, have great names). It just feels really bad to leave a town with a bunch of cash and nothing to spend it on.
Another idea is perhaps to be able to strategically design the formation of you team of peeps - there's a lot of potential here. I like the idea a lot of a kind of shmup tower defense.
Anyway, this is a great entry with lots of enemy variety and flavour. Wonderful job!