One thing you may have noticed is each skill level has a different "points per robot killed". This brings me the next major change in the Krashlander 1.1 update.

Scoring and Level Progression

I had to make a tough decision when it came to scoring and level progression. The changes I wanted to make would require wiping everyones progress and putting everyone back to square one in the game. Obviously this would anger a lot of existing players and probably catch me a fair amount of bad reviews.

With sincere apologies to everyone whos progress will be reset, I decided to go ahead with the changes. Here is why.

The way scoring was (version 1.0)

In the original 1.0 version of Krashlander, the goal was to destroy all the robots in a level with as few attempts (attacks) as possible. Each level had a sort of "par" value. If you destroyed all the robots in "par" attacks you earned 3 stars. Par minus 1 attacks would get you 2 stars, Par minus 2: 1 star, and anything more than that was 0 stars.

I don't think most people fully understood how this worked. Most knew that killing more robots with fewer attacks resulted in more stars, but the finer details were lost on most. It also lead to some awkward wording at the end of each level where I tried to explain why they got the number of stars they did.

The other side effect of this system was that a LOT of people would do a complete reset of the level whenever they didn't destroy all the robots in one shot. This required and extra button push and was really NOT how the game was intended to be played. I get why people played it that way, to go for a perfect score on every level, but I really think it exposed flaw in my game design.

The way scoring is (version 1.1)

In the new 1.1 version of Krashlander, things are more straightforward.

Each level has 3 robots.

You earn 1 star for each robot.

Destroy at least 2 robots to unlock the next level.

That's it.

With this system, the number of attacks is not factored into the score so constantly resetting the level should not be required. If this sounds to easy, fear not. Some of the robots, especially in the later levels, will be a bit of a challenge to reach.



Skill Levels and Scoring

Now, about the skill levels and scoring.

Playing Krashlander as "Elite" is my new favorite way to play. It requires a bit of skill, but it's very rewarding to complete a level knowing there was no "fake" physics assisting you. I want to encourage others to work toward playing in Elite mode. I also want to reward those that do choose to play that way. So, here is what I did.

As mentioned earlier in this post, each skill level has a score multiplier:

Novice - 1 point per robot

Expert - 2 points per robot

Elite - 3 points per robot

The score and level progression for each skill level is tracked separately and your overall game score is simply whichever score is highest at the time between Novice, Expert, and Elite.