Score

Upon completing a level, you will be awarded a score value, which determines your ranking on the Leaderboards.

Score is determined by completion speed, keeping up the combo multiplier to receive more points per kill, collecting the Battery, and killing mobs quickly together (surge).

Combo chain and combo multiplier
Killing at least 3 enemies within 2.5 seconds of one another will begin a combo chain, which gives you a combo multiplier. Your current chain length, multiplier and timer is displayed in the top left, below your health.

Killing another enemy within 2.5 seconds will extend the chain. Consistently doing this is called "holding combo" or "holding chain". Boss phases typically have longer chain timers of many seconds, but for some phases of some bosses, you must also kill secondary targets to maintain the chain for that phase (eg. Vespula, Justice, Venom)

If you fail to kill anything within 2.5 seconds of the last kill, the chain will be broken and you will be returned to a chain length of 0 and a combo multiplier of 1. This is called "dropping combo" or "dropping chain".

In multiplayer, each Android has their own individual chain, displayed in the same corner as their health.

Surge bonus
Killing two or more enemies within a very short time period (roughly 0.1 seconds or so), or at the exact same time via AoE attacks, gives a 50% bonus to points awarded for both kills. This is indicated by the combo indicator in the top right flashing red, and the combo multiplier briefly increasing by 50%. If the combo multiplier is odd, it will still increase by 50%, but to a non-integer value, eg. 5x -> 7.5x.

Note that the surge bonus is awarded to both kills, always. If you kill Enemy 1, you will be awarded its normal score value (times combo multiplier), but if you kill Enemy 2 very shortly after, you will be retrospectively awarded the surge bonus on Enemy 1.

Surge is the main mechanic which makes androids like Coral and Shiitake high scorers.

Collecting the Battery
Each Battery is worth 1000 base points. Collecting it nets you 1000 points multiplied by your current Combo multiplier.

Collecting the Battery while performing a surge kill does not affect battery points.

Base score values for mobs and bosses
When you kill an enemy or finish a boss phase, you receive points equal to that enemy/phase's base score multiplied by your current combo multiplier.

Time bonus
Each level has a developer-set "par time". Beating the level quicker than said time nets a score bonus. The rate is 1600 points per second under par.

If you beat the level in an equal to or slower than par time, there is 0 time bonus awarded, not negative.

Quick kills on boss phases
In addition to the combo multiplier, there is an additional

Getting knocked down
When you get knocked down, your current score decreases by 10%. This is the only time that your score actually decreases.

Score during Collider
After Liquorice appears in Collider, enemies don't count for score nor do they increase the Combo chain, but they can be used to refresh it. Surges are also disabled.

Knocking down Liquorice increases the Combo chain timer to 10 seconds, and you receive a score bonus (how much?) when she runs out of Battery which is affected by your combo multiplier.

Therefore, your goals during this phase are:


 * Don't drop the chain, in order to receive the maximum score bonus for defeating Liquorice.


 * Don't give Liquorice any batteries, or you will receive a significantly lower time bonus.

Credits
The amount of Credits you're awarded per level is your score divided by 1000 (or equivalently, 1000 Credits per million score points).

Credits are used to unlock EX Options, artwork in the Art Gallery, and Codex entries, all of which can be found in the Collections section of the main menu.