Wow, thanks for your huge dedication! If you're curious my best is round 22 so far, I don't know how much further is possible!
Viewing post in Hold the Fort jam comments
I actually played for a bit more since then, since I do have a chronic need to beat stuff, some free time, and want to give any game I play the time I want to, not an arbitrary amount.
Frankly, idk how far I got anymore, but I think if you don't screw up, you can theoretically go to about... eh, lets call it round 40?
The worst case scenario is encountering a kind-of rare bug, where you are stuck in placement during the heroes attack - none of your units do anything, and you cannot control the boss then. It happened like once every 25 attacks or so. So, how can you deal with that? Spikes. Just do spikes. They are the only thing that is not only indestructible by the bombs and unaffected by the bug, but placed correctly can deal 1 whole heart of damage per spike.
The two biggest problems with getting there is user error (replacing the gate keys every round) and one other "bug"/feature - when a hero picks up a key, but doesn't unlock a gate (ie. they die before) you cant place a new key. This screws up the routing for optimal spikage, and in rare cases softlocks the game (see image, he had a key for gate 2 from a previous life, used it on gate 1, and now he is stuck in the corner where a key he already had should be)
I think spikage, spellmasters in corners (especially on the side the hero enters to waste their arrows while getting free hits!) and blobs to stop them for magic bolts is optimal.
I also had a play after reading your comment and I had such a similar experience haha. Haven’t seen the issue with the placement state in hero phase yet but certainly got tripped up by forgetting to replace a key or the hero using a key in the wrong order. At round 30+ you get the best ending message but the hero got stuck on 33 so I didn’t see it lol. Thanks so much for playing probably even longer than me, I think you’ve well and truly beaten the game now!