Video Game / 30XX

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30XX is the sequel to Batterystaple Games' 20XX. Like its predecessor, it's a platforming-style rogue-lite heavily inspired by Mega Man X.

After escaping and shutting down Professors Brighton Sharp and Arlan Flat's nefarious experiments, Nina and Ace awaken a thousand years later to a world completely remade and ruled over by the Synthetic Mind. Somewhere along the way, humanity lost their freedom, hopes, and dreams. The contractors must now jump and shoot their way through this new reality, on the chance that they may save what remains.

Unlike its predecessor, the game offers two main modes of play:

• Standard: The normal roguelike, Final Death Mode, where the main levels are played in a random order, with the player losing all upgrades and progress upon death, though the player can buy permanent upgrades with 'Memoria' currency back at the HQ.
• Mega Mode: A mode that removes all roguelike and Final Death Mode elements, with three save file slots available. All main stages can be played in any order, with increasing difficulty based on 'Normal', 'Bold', and 'Defiant' tiers. Levels are still randomly generated, but are based on a seed that is generated upon a new save file that then stays the same for that particular file. Like with Standard mode, there are permanent upgrades that can be bought with 'Memoria' currency that affects all and future Mega Mode save files.
• Exile Mode: A mode that plays up more Roguelike elements. In this mode, stages are listed as tiers, with the player going through each tier, one at a time. Every time a tier is entered, one of three stages can be picked, each with positive and negative modifiers. The pool of stages and modifiers is randomized on each attempt. Cores, weapons, and powers all also have modifiers on them, with the player having a limited inventory to store them in, being encouraged to sell ones they aren't using, or to spend screws to add or remove modifiers. Going through the tiers and reaching the Boss-Only Level tiers is the way to progress, with the goal being to eventually reach the Final Tier. This mode can be played in Softcore and Hardcore, the former sending you back to HQ with your collected items if you die, the latter being a Final Death Mode where dying will reset all your progress.

The game was released on Steam in Early Access on February 17, 2021, and received a full release on August 9, 2023. It continued to receive content updates, including a paid DLC featuring Dally as a playable character, until being put on indefinite hiatus on January 9th, 2025 to allow BSG to begin development of future titles. On Febuary 21st, 2026, the game would receive a surprise update, adding the Exile Mode.

30XX provides examples of:

• Ability Mixing:
  • Nina's Power Fusion ability lets her augment one power with another to get one that has properties of both. For example, augmenting the Rending Whirl (creates a tornado where Nina stands) with the Negating Pulse (erases projectiles in a small area) results in a lasting barrier that absorbs projectiles.
  • The changes to how Core Augments work allows one to mix and match them to stack their effects. For instance, you can equip Oxjack's Blitz and Dracopent's Bound at the same time to enable air dashing and Double Jumping.
• Aggressive Play Incentive:
  • Ace's Style mechanic encourages his players to keep seeking out enemies to attack, as his energy regeneration stays high as he lands hits.
  • Delta has a Hype mechanic that builds stacks as he hits enemies, and with enough stacks he can consume them to recover his energy and gain a substantial damage and movement buff. Constantly moving forward for more enemies to attack is thusly encouraged.
• A.I. Breaker: In earlier versions of the game, Legacy's weakness was an example of this trope being intentional game design. In his base pattern, Legacy took "turns" moving with its Shapes; they moved into their new positions, and then Legacy moved. Freezing the shapes with Crystal Wave prevented them from moving on their "turn", which also froze Legacy. Augment Crystal Wave with Rending Whirl, and Legacy would be stuck just sitting there while Nina pounded away on him with her Buster.
• All Hail the Great God Mickey!:
  • The Burning Temple used to be a factory, but centuries of post-human drift have led the robots inside to reinterpret its operational manuals as scriptures for some kind of ancient martial arts.
  • Absolution and the robots in Penumbra worship Eleanor as a god by mistaking her writings for holy texts. The abandoned laboratory's datalore confirms this is the end result of an intentional setup by Eleanor herself, and the final level of the main story takes place in the "canon" layout of Penumbra.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: The final two stages take elements from the first eight stages and combine them together, while adding some new gimmicks into the mix. The various puzzle levels that you access on the path to the true ending also take elements from various stages.
• All Your Powers Combined: Eleanor exhibits the abilities of all the main bossfights in the game. Midgard Core/Devotion's End also uses all the special weapons of the 20XX versions of Nina/Ace.
• Ambiguous Robots: Though Eleanor and Alexia appear to be human, the main story repeatedly calls this into question and suggests they may instead be robots like the Contractors. They were both able to survive for more than 800 years past an apocalypse and a terraformed Earth unfit for human habitation, Eleanor is not seen using any external weapons or equipment to use her attacks in her boss fight, and the Alternate Self of Alexia explodes when killed. The fact that they are related to Arlan and Brighton respectively only further adds to the confusion.
• Antepiece:
  • Each stage starts with a section in which you can check out its gimmicks without much danger.
  • Each stage has at least one common enemy or hazard similar to an attack the boss will use. In Highvault, for example, one of the most common obstacles are Whirlbots, box-like enemies that fire tornados. They telegraph and fire them using the same timing as Hoot Omega's Rending Whirl.
• Amplifier Artifact: The Resonant Armor pieces enhance the effects of Core Augs of the same type.
• And the Adventure Continues: The current story does not actually resolve Project Midgard or the threat of multiversal collapse it is attempting to prevent, leaving it to continue indefinitely. However, the Golden Ending proves it can work without allowing Eleanor or her servants to die.
• Animal Motifs: Delta has a lion motif, especially with his full Resonant Armor set equipped. It fits his loud and proud nature.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Energy has been overhauled for the sequel; instead of a separate energy pickup, characters now restore energy by destroying enemies and collecting health pickups. Therefore, there's less of a chance of being full on health but utterly dry on energy, or brimming with energy but limping along with just a sliver of health.
  • New to this game is the ability to reroll gear you find for a chance at something better. Now you don't need to totally abandon something that you don't want. If you have rerolls to spare, you can roll the dice to see if you can get something better.
  • A new item lets you use 20 nuts in place of tokens for slot machines. Handy for if you have a ton of nuts but tokens are scarce.
  • If you pick up a Resonator but do not have any of the relevant Cores (for example, getting a Resonant Helmet but having no Head Cores), a random Core for the part in question will be given to you immediately. This ensures that your efforts in getting the Resonator are not wasted, especially as you usually need to fight an Optional Boss in order to obtain them.
  • Glory Zones and Contemplation Shrines in the area before the final boss have no time or damage requirements, so you will always have a selection of three Augs to pick from if you clear the challenge.
  • A run is considered won once you defeat the final boss, so you don't have to fret if you die during the subsequent Escape Sequence.
  • After clearing the Escape Sequence for the first time, a portal appears that lets you skip it in subsequent runs.
  • If a level secret that changes the entire level is ready to be triggered, its teleporter will gain extra effects surrounding it.
  • If you’re missing one of the items necessary to access a level secret and you’re on the 7th stage, Delta is guaranteed to show up and offer a challenge that rewards the last item you’re missing.
  • After the Symbol of Peace is unlocked, a purple capsule spawns in the REV Device's room that starts a run with it equipped, allowing for immediate access to all dialogue related to the Golden Ending (talking to all eight bosses, plus the ending itself) and its achievement, as opposed to the previous system where you had to rely on the random chance of finding a Very Safe Lab spawn and hoping the Symbol of Peace shows up there before the end of the run.
  • The Faithmetal Flock entropy condition, which increases the health of enemies, also increases the time bonus you get in Glory Zones and Contemplation Shrines by the same amount, preventing them from becoming unwinnable.
  • If the player collects the Edges of Madness prototype (rerolls the entire inventory) while they have the Zookeper's Burden (obtain one of every Repro but can't attack), the drawback of the Zookeper's Burden is removed, regardless off how many repros the player ends up with afterward.
• Apocalypse How: The scope of the danger changes through the course of the game. While at first you find yourself trying to avert the destruction of the world, you later find that the world has already been wiped clean of humanity due to junk-storms caused by poorly-understood use of gravity technology, leaving just the machines. However, later story developments reveal that any world you fail to save experiences total universal obliteration at the hands of Midgard, in service of preventing a total multiversal collapse due to the existence of too many multiverses.
• Apocalyptic Log: Some of the stage datalores take the form of logs. Most notable are the Watergrav and Highvault logs. The former of which detail the events that caused the scrap disaster, and the latter of which has a weather report giving the date of the scrap disaster.
• Artifact Title: The five Dark Reprises of the 20XX OST have mix names corresponding to the two-letter abbreviations of a 30XX tileset used by the game's code. The problem is that due to shifts in the game's development and storywriting, none of them play in the "correct" tileset except for "Echoes Never Die."
  • "Millenium Spark" is marked as a Burning Temple mix. It actually plays in Dustria should the player enter with more than 50 Scrap.
  • "Midnight Sun" is marked as a Watergrav mix. It actually plays in Deepverse should the player enter with a full Vagrant set.
  • "Existential Shuffle" is marked as an Echocave mix. It actually plays in Eleanor's lab, which uses Watergrav's tileset.
  • "Generation Rising" is marked as a Dustria mix, but that is already taken by "Millenium Spark."
• Asteroids Monster: One of the gauntlet bosses splits into two when damaged enough.
• Astral Finale: Stages 9 and 10 both take place in space.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Desperate Void augment increases the effects and costs of Crushing Void and its fusions, most notably, Crushing Void and Negation Pulse goes from a full screen attack to a full level attack that destroys all enemies and minibosses. The only problem with this is it costs 1000 NRG to use, and for balance reasons doesn't work on the last two levels of the game. Factor in that you need at least 3 of the 8 courses just to get the two powers and the aug, and then have to find the NRG to use it, it's actually very unlikely that you're going to get to take advantage of this ability at all, let alone even once.
• Balance Buff: Core Augments have their own inventory now, where you can turn them on and off whenever you like. Under this new system, armor set cores are no longer mutually exclusive with one another. You can collect the same part from two or more armors and activate them together to stack and combine their effects.
• Band Land: Echocave is a mix of a musical level and Crystal Landscape, as crystals, gigantic speakers, and gigantic crystal tuning forks are strewn throughout.
• Battle in the Rain: The weather storms rainy during the battle against Hoot Omega.
• Bittersweet Ending: The secret ending. The multiverse culling will proceed, and many more universes and Eleanors will die, but you've at least managed to reunite Eleanor and Alexia in one of them. If nothing else, it will at least show the Midgard plan doesn't require Eleanor and the eight bosses to die in order to consider a world spared.
• Bonus Stage:
  • Glory Zones return from 20XX, though they're now more platforming-focused challenges, and give you a selection of rewards based on either time or damage taken.
  • Gauntlets have you fighting through a corridor packed with enemies, and a special miniboss fight at the end. Clearing the gauntlet rewards you with a Resonant Armor piece.
  • Contemplation Shrines task you with clearing several waves of enemies in enclosed rooms. Like Glory Zones, the rewards you can get depend on how many times you get hit or how quickly you complete the challenge.
• Boss-Altering Consequence:
  • The order in which you do the bosses will impact the order in which Eleanor will use the abilities of all the bosses during their fight in Level 9/Aspera. Additionally, the last three bosses killed add additional hazards to the arena past a certain HP threshold.
    • Hoot Omega will cause junk to begin raining down non-stop.
    • Absolution will cause scythes to begin rotating around the arena.
    • Experiment 9 will cause a copy of itself to be summoned, which performs its jump kicks on a loop.
    • Capital Punishment causes an additional fist to be summoned intermittently.
    • Legacy causes lasers to appear intermittently.
    • Echobeast will cause two of its electric projectiles to be fired off, though they are still vulnerable to Negation Pulse.
    • Lethal Tempo replaces the center platform with a sawblade.
    • Zen Primus causes fireballs to appear from the sides and floor of the arena intermittently.
  • If you bring the items for the Imbued Chronovane to Highvault, the level will change so that there is a constant meteor shower in what is heavily implied to be the past. Instead of fighting you, Hoot Omega gains a new Boss Subtitle, "Protector of Elements", and protects you from the meteors as you progress through what would have been the boss arena in a normal run.
  • If you wear the full Vagrant Core set to the Deepverse or otherwise have the set bonus, the level will become corrupted, with swarms of corrupted bits regularly appearing. When you get to the end, Legacy lacks any Boss Subtitles as he becomes a Zero-Effort Boss, doing nothing and dying in one hit.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: The boss of Dustria is surrounded by a trio of floating fists that serve as both his main means of attack and a shield against your attacks. They're invulnerable to most of your weapons. However, there's a pair of exploding box spawners in the floor, which exist for the sole purpose of letting you launch the boxes into the fists, which also hurts the boss. Depending on how your build is progressing, this might be the only safe way to deal damage to him.
• Boss Remix: Each level theme has a variation that plays during their miniboss segments, as well as a complete re-arrangement that plays during the boss proper. The 30XX title theme itself also gets remixed for the final boss theme.
• Boss Subtitles: Each boss has their own intro splash screen and accompanying title.
  • Lethal Tempo, Doomsday Reckoner
  • Capital Punishment, Laissez Fist
  • Absolution, Redeemer's Grace
  • Experiment 9, Subjective Gravity
  • Hoot Omega, Scion of Storms//Protector of Elements, should you be on an Imbued Chronovane run
  • Echobeast, Slumbering Sentry
  • Legacy, Graceful Host
  • Zen Primus, Peaceful Postulant
  • Devotion's End, Architect's Opus
  • Averted with Eleanor. While she gets a splash screen, her full title as a boss fight is "Eleanor, the Architect", with no subtitle.
• Break Out the Museum Piece:
  • Data Lore indicates while a number of the enemies and bosses fought are original creations of Eleanor’s, just as many of them are repurposed artifacts from 800 years ago. It’s noted most of her resources are going into Project Midgard, so cost cutting measures like this are necessary.
  • Vika and Jest are self-inflicted examples, derelict prototypes from the 20XX era barely held together by scrap and which operate at less than half the power of Nina and Ace. While it's unknown what Jest is doing canonically, Vika is initially introduced as the Smuggler, trading powerful equipment she's scavenged over the years for the Scrap and Memoria she needs to sustain herself.
• Bus Crash: 1.3 reveals Al died between 20XX and 30XX, which is why Dally does not have a Revenant counterpart. Whether this was because Ace and Nina abandoned him like they did the other Revenants or because he was wiped out in the Scrap Disaster is not stated.
• Cast from Hit Points: Picking up Remnant of Sorrow allows the player to cast powers using hit points, when energy gets too low.
• Catching Some Z's: Sleeping characters, like Echobeast let out Z letters when sleeping.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The game's setting initially appears to be like the early Mega Man X games, clearly worse for wear and grittier following some unspecified incident but ultimately still thriving and lighthearted. Then you trigger the event flags for the main story, which reveal the world you're protecting is already dead, it's connected to a multiverse that is also dying, and the items you need to unlock the option for the Golden Ending require reliving nearly a thousand years of loss and suffering through the game's cast, including the only two of the eight bosses who remember anything about what the world was like before.
• Challenge Run:
  • The Entropy Cluster lets you add additional stipulations to a run, like increased environmental damage or time limits.
  • Delta can appear at the start of a level and challenge you to complete it under certain conditions, like being unable to use powers or augs or with reduced attack damage, for rewards. When actually playing as Delta, these challenges are also issued to him, and he can pick up to three of them, but he has to pick at least one challenge to continue the level.
  • Several achievements challenge you to complete a run under certain conditions:
    • Honor and Glory requires you to score gold in all Glory Zones and Contemplation Rooms.
    • Ol' Reliable requires you to never pick up a boss power. Doing this and also not picking up any Core Augs during the second act of the main story provides a key item if it hasn't already been unlocked.
    • Not Even Close requires you to have a total of 10 HP and armor or less remaining.
    • Just Like Him requires you to have at least 3 Prototype Augs and no System Restore. If Burning Temple is not entered until these conditions are met, doing so awards a key item if the second act of the main story has been unlocked.
    • Untouchable requires you to have taken damage ten or fewer times.
    • Nut Avoider requires you to pick up no more than 5 nuts. Originally this was no nuts at all, as the achievement itself states, but it was changed in 1.2.6 to be less punishing. Nuts that get stuck in a wall and forced into the player's inventory now also no longer count against the achievement due to player feedback.
  • Eternal Challenges alter a run in substantial ways. For example, Childish Gamblerino removes shops and makes slot machines always spawn, and Polygons of Madness rerolls your entire inventory when a boss is defeated.
• Cherry Blossoms: Cherry blossom petals fall once you defeat Zen Primus at Burning Temple, affirming your victory.
• Creepy Cathedral: Penumbra takes place in a church with gigantic stained windows. Its boss, Absolution, looks like a demented preacher.
• Classic Cheat Code: Ctrl-Shift plus certain keys enable certain helpful developer features.
  • H toggles hitbox visibility.
  • I/J/K/L teleports the player up/left/down/right.
• Clockworks Area: Clockzone is a, well, clock-tower-themed area filled with perpetually moving gears.
• Coin-on-a-String Trick: One of the augments is called Nutsaving Stringwire that gives 50% chance to use some machines for free.
• Conspicuous Electric Obstacle:
  • Deepverse has electric beams connecting electric nodes. It also has electric beam emitters that travel across the surfaces.
  • Dustria has electrified sections of rails. Moving platforms become very visibly electrified when they move along those rails.
• Continuing Is Painful: Not normal runs, but certain points required to advance the main story. The Dustria, Deepverse, and Highvault secrets can be restarted from the REV Device if the player unlocks them in a normal run but dies before reaching the goal, but these restrict the player to fixed loadouts that may lack the power and survivability of a regular build that exists on top of the items used to unlock them. While this isn't as noticeable in Highvault (which gives both the Oxjack and Dracopent boots, some repros, and extra health) and Deepverse, Dustria suffers especially without access to lifesteal and having to scavenge for the items required to boost healing.
• Crosshair Aware: Many enemy attacks, particularly those from bosses, are often telegraphed with a circled ! sign.
• Cyberspace: Deepverse takes place in a location inspired by video games.
• Dark Reprise: All Secret Levels and level variants required to progress the main story except for the "waveformcollapse" seed and Delta's home use remixes of the 20XX OST, which have been warped in various ways to fit their new context.
  • The Deepverse secret (where the simulation finally succumbs to entropy as a consequence of bringing a full Vagrant set) plays "Midnight Sun," a melancholic synthwave remix of "Permafrost."
  • The Highvault secret (where the Chronovane rewinds time to the 2256 apocalypse) plays "Echoes Never Die," a remix of "Endless Echo" in a lower key to represent the turning point between the 20XX and the 30XX eras.
  • Eleanor's lab (which uses Watergrav's tileset) plays "Existential Shuffle," a swing mix of "Identity Crisis."
  • The Dustria secret (Midgard's core) plays "Millenium Spark," an intensified remix of "Firestorm" that hints at the discovery awaiting within.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Take 20XX's issues with different inputs for different leg cores and add on the fact that they can be all stacked together, particularly in conjunction with remembering how many double jumps you do before you start gliding or flying.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Nina and Ace are now much more distinct characters. In 20XX, their only differences were the main weapons they could equip. Now, they gain different powers and have unique mechanics, like Nina's power fusion.
• Double Jump:
  • Some core augments will give extra jumps.
  • The Cloud Auras, wing symbols in Highvault, give a temporary mid-air jump.
• Dramatic Irony: The final Watergrav Datalore describes a potential problem on the horizon but optimistic that 16 months of prep time will be enough to come up with a plan to avert disaster. It’s not.
• Driven to Suicide: Nina and Ace crush themselves to death in Midgard's startup sequence at the end of Symbol of Submission runs, as the premature understanding of Eleanor's plans causes them to give up on everything they had fought for.
• Dual Boss: Both Echocave miniboss and Prenumbra miniboss appear in pairs.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: The Symbol of Submission is a net benefit gameplay-wise, as you don't have to fight any boss and runs terminate prematurely at the end of Level 9 while still counting for unlocks and statistics. Its punishment comes in its story implications, where Nina and Ace give up on life and agree to destroy their universe together with Eleanor.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Taking the Tick Tock prototype aug (complete invincibility, but take 10 base damage every 10/15 seconds) removes the time bonus in daily and weekly runs, as it is surprisingly easy to collect enough healing to overcome the timer.
• Escape Sequence: Like 20XX, you have to flee to an escape pod after you defeat the final boss, but this time with an invincible enemy chasing you.
• Eternal Engine:
  • Dustria is a gigantic factory filled with industrial equipment and robotic workers all looking to take you out.
  • Clockzone to a certain extent with perpetually moving machinery.
• Evil Counterpart: The mid boss of the final level is an evil version of Alexia, presumably one from an alternate dimension that went along with Eleanor's plans instead of fighting against her.
• Expy:
  • Midgard's first boss, 20XX Nina, is clearly based on Copy X, as a malevolent clone of the X analogue. They also use similar patterns of electric/ice/fire/impact weaponry that the Zero series onward established.
  • Devotion's End is a rehash of Omega, a malicious program inhabiting the original body of the Zero analogue. The primary difference is that even though Midgard is clearly controlling Devotion's End, it is very strongly implied the Ace underneath knew this would happen when he put himself in stasis. His first phase also incorporates a wireframe head like the Sigma Virus, even though it was eradicated by the time Omega was created.
  • Hoot Omega bears some resemblance to the manga version of Storm Eagle, another avian robot who fights with tornadoes and sacrifices himself to give the protagonist a Plot Coupon when following the main story, being the only one of the eight bosses who was always programmed to help humanity.
• Fighting Across Time and Space: The final stage warps through locations you've encountered previously as you battle your way through it. It's also the background for the final boss fight.
• Flame Spewer Obstacle: Burning temple is filled with flame emitters.
• Floating Platforms: Many platforms hang mid-air, sometimes using jets.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The intro/tutorial stage features Ace going to awaken Nina from her stasis pod. Eleanor stops him but rather than destroy Nina herself she simply issues a challenge to Nina and awakens her herself. This alludes to the fact that Eleanor does actually want Nina to defeat her in at least some universes.
  • Completing a Symbol of Submission run plays a somber-sounding theme in place of the usual credits music; its chord progression is strangely identical to Delta's theme. This is the first sign he knows much more about the main story than he's letting on, and sure enough, the same song plays once you find the ruins of his home in the Burning Temple and a note confirming he used to work for Eleanor a long time ago.
• Former Friends Photo: The ultimate objective to the path to the Golden Ending is finding the two halves of one of these depicting Eleanor and Alexia.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: All the runs you've been going on? They're each in a different universe. The ones where you fail are eventually destroyed.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: No matter who you win a run with or whether or not you survive the Escape Sequence, the regular credits screen will show Nina, Ace, Alexia, and Dally looking at Midgard's remains in the distance.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Hoot Omega flies away when damaged enough, forcing you to race through the stage to get back to them.
• Gravity Screw: One of Watergrav's features are panels that flip you and enemies upside-down and back. It also has switches that change the gravity of the water in the stage, which can affect enemies and platforms.
• The Great Serpent: Midgard, who also serves as the game's final level.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Ace's Grandmaster and Dally's Murder Mitten are capable of launching enemies, turning them into projectiles. In this state, all enemies do damage equal to their own max HP.
• Golden Ending: If you manage to complete the secret tasks and gather all the mysterious items, you unlock the Symbol of Peace, which causes all of the bosses to stand down and let you pass without a fight. Once you reach the end of Stage 9, Eleanor invites you to the cliff where she's about to summon Midgard, but Alexia teleports in and talks her down. The two resolve their matters, and vow to rebuild the world they're in.
• Goomba Stomp: With remnant of Determination, the player can jump on enemies to deal damage.
• Gusty Glade: Highvault has some sections where winds blow above, slowing down player's fall.
• Homage: The final fight is a send-up to several iconic Mega Man final bosses, pitting you against expies of Copy X, Sigma, and Awakened Zero/Omega in that order.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: Ace can wield Lara: A two-sided weapon with its head bigger than than the player.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Treasure chests are scattered throughout the levels, containing various pick-ups and augments.
• Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: Conveyor belts appear in Dustria as a common stage hazard. Conveyor belts also appear in Fire Temple.
• Indy Escape: The first half of the Burning Temple miniboss involves you being chased by a giant flaming spike wheel down a narrow corridor full of enemies and obstacles, until you eventually run into a larger room and fight it there properly.
• Kaizo Trap: The first time you defeat Aspera's miniboss, it falls apart. After a moment, the parts spring back up, begin acting on their own, and you have to take them down once more.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The auto tank grants you some health when you take fatal damage. However, you need to fill it with health pickups first, and it has a limited amount of uses per run.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Elanor's final datalore entry is addressed to the person reading it, which in context could be referring to Nina and Ace but can just as easily be addressing the player directly. Especially as it regards to her plan to use them as the deciding factor to make the culling of worlds random, as every time the player fails, that world will end.
• Lethal Joke Item:
  • The Toy Beam weakens Nina's normal attack and adds angle variance to her shots. However, it also essentially costs -5 Core Points to equip, giving you room to equip other Core Augs.
  • Useless Garbage is an Aug that has no effects. However, the Smuggler will take it for five Scrapbits, the most she gives for a single Aug. Those Scrapbits can be traded for more useful Augs.
• Level Editor: There's a level editor, the same one the developers use, which lets players create their own 30XX levels and share them around the world.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic:
  • The Parallelized Fate upgrade provides rerolls that let players change a dropped Aug to a different one.
  • Overclocking the Honest Research upgrade lets you reroll Prototypes, although it will cost more rerolls to do so.
  • Scrap trades can be rerolled with the cost of scrap.
  • The Environment Configurator upgrade lets you give some stages a higher or lower chance of appearing early in a run. In 1.3 and beyond, this also allows the odds of stage variants to be changed.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Alexia and Eleanor are descendants of Brighton and Arlan respectively, as revealed by the Golden Ending's palette unlocks showing they share last names.
• Macrogame: You can spend Memoria at Memory Index for upgrades that can give you an advantage in future runs. After completing your first run, you can overclock upgrades using Titan Shards, providing further boosts.
• Magikarp Power: The Vagrant Core set. Wearing any one of the Core Augs enables the Corruption meter, which builds as you deal damage with your attacks and increases your abilities in the process, until the meter maxes out, disabling attacks, powers, and dashes until it cools down. Each individual Core Aug gives you a supercharged ability that works only during the Corruption overload, but if you have only one of the Augs, you need to adjust on the fly to having most of your buttons turn off at inconvenient times. On the other hand, if you have collected all four pieces, you can enjoy invulnerability, charged shot spam, Energy-free powers, and lightning-speed dashes with impunity.
• Metal Slime: Loot Omega looks like a gold-colored Hoot Omega and has the same evasive properties. Hitting them makes them drop special nuts that explode when they hit the ground, and if you destroy them in time you get an aug as a reward.
• Meta Twist:
  • Devotion's End is based on Awakened Zero and Omega, meaning it's implied the version of Ace it uses is functionally just a different mind uploaded to his body, or at least him under very heavy brainwashing. This is technically true, but Dustria's secret reveals Ace agrees with everything Devotion's End can and will do and gave his consent for Eleanor to turn him into it, meaning they are the same entity on a psychological level.
  • Likewise, 20XX Nina appears to be a clone when you fight her due to her Copy X inspirations. It's later revealed she's most likely an Alternate Self rather than a true replication, meaning she is instead based on the original cut of Mega Man Zero where X himself turned evil.
• The Minion Master: The Zookeeper Augs provide substantial buffs to repros, to the point that you can have them do all the attacking for you.
• Mirror Boss: Delta is this, both matching your weapon and using the same special abilities as you.
• More Dakka:
  • Nina's Buster upgrades are treated as Core Augments, and thus can also be activated together to combine their effects. Most of those upgrades add to the total number of Buster shots that appear on the screen every time Nina fires. Forkalator and Scatterblast upgrades add more shots fired at once in a larger arc. Retrobeam adds a single shot that fires backward. Vertibeam adds single shots firing up and down. Star Beam fires in all four cardinal directions. Getting lucky with Buster upgrades on a Standard run or Mega Mode file can result in Nina filling the space around her with yellow Buster spam.
  • The Verity Beam is a more literal version of this, turning Nina's buster into a machine gun while removing her charge shot. Gets even better when combined with Retrofork, Vertibeam, Retrobeam, Forkalator... And if you have the full Dracopent set plus the Arm Resonator, you can lay waste to your foes with a machinegun stream of LV 3 charge shots.
• Mythology Gag: The large dragon boss fought in the tutorial and Aspera is Kur from 20XX. Although all his attacks aesthetically look different, they all mechanically work like his attacks from 20XX, such as an attack where the sends tornadoes forward with gaps that have to be jumped through, just like he did with walls of quint lasers.
• The Needs of the Many: This is the whole reason Ace tries to wake up Nina in the tutorial, why the game itself lambasts her for putting herself in stasis in the 23rd century, and the reason the version of Ace who became Devotion's End chose that path for himself; his dialogue indicates he's an altruist at the expense of everything (and everyone) else.
• Nerf:
  • Main weapon stat ups are much rarer than in the previous game, making the old strategy of dumping special weapons and energy to focus purely on buffing the main weapons much harder to pull off.
  • The Patchwork Connector (only need three Core Augs of a set to get the Set Bonus) does not return from 20XX, with its functionality appearing on the Prototype Augs Patchwork Integrator (which also reduces damage the more Core Augs you equip) and Patchwork Overloader (which also increases CP cost of Core Augs).
  • Boss weaknesses are no longer a thing the way they were in 20XX, as flat damage multipliers tended to make having the right power a little too strong. Instead powers tend to interact with boss mechanics, such as the Zen Mortar and Leviathan being able to do damage to Capital Punishment's fists, which normally can't be damaged by anything.
• Non-Standard Game Over: The Dustria and Aspera secrets (enter with 50 Scrap and no powers, weapons, or cores respectively) immediately terminate a run when completed regardless of previous progression.
• Noob Bridge: Some segments of the main story (notably the tutorial secret and Scripture) require the player to perform very difficult jumps surrounded by hazards with minimal or no mobility aids, which is a skill absolutely vital for clearing high-entropy runs (which are usually either timed and/or greatly increase damage.)
• Optional Boss:
  • The Gauntlet Bonus Stages have a boss at the end you have to defeat in order to complete it.
  • Delta can appear in the middle of the stage as an optional fight with a random stipulation attached.
• Orbiting Particle Shield:
  • Legacy has orbiting orbs as one of his moves.
  • The Orbital Barrier repro orbits around your character and blocks projectiles.
• Pacifist Run: Ultimately, the main story is about trying to create one in a genre that isn't particularly conducive to the option. You ultimately can't resolve the actual multiverse-spanning conflict that Eleanor is trying to solve, but you can, at least, prove to her somehow that she and the eight bosses don't have to die to consider a world saved. Hoot Omega even says as much once the Symbol of Peace is unlocked.
• Painting the Medium: If the run timer is enabled, the Deepverse and Highvault secrets will interact with it, In the corrupted Deepverse, the timer becomes as glitched as everything else, and in the Highvault past, the timer reflects that you've gone back in time by showing the run time of -420759360 minutes.
• Pineapple Ruins Pizza: Ace eats pizza this way. The game itself thinks he's weird for doing so and tells you this is why you shouldn't trust his insistence that Red Is Heroic. Of course, considering the existence of Devotion's End, it's not wrong about that last part, per se...
• Power at a Price:
  • Prototype Augments return from 20XX, which grant you a significant advantage in exchange for a severe drawback. Prototype Resonator will give you more power at the same drawback while System Restore will usually remove it.
  • The Vagrant Core Augs grant powerful benefits, but add a corruption meter that increases as you attack. Once it's filled, you overheat and are unable to do any actions besides the ones provided by your Vagrant core pieces until it's empty again.
  • Fatal Fury increases attack and power strength by one and can be taken up to five times, but each pickup costs 10 maximum HP, multiplied by the number of Fatal Fury Augs you currently hold.
• Power Palms: Delta shoots blaster shots from his palms.
• Promoted to Playable:
  • The 1.1 update adds the revenants Vika and Jest, the former of which is the Smuggler NPC who trades items for scrap.
  • The 1.2 update adds Delta, an NPC who issues the player challenges, as a free playable character.
  • The 1.3 update adds the revenant Dolto, the Training Dummy.
• Regenerating Mana: Ace has a unique Style mechanic, which he gains stacks of as he hits enemies with melee weapons and techniques. Ace's energy regenerates more quickly the more stacks of Style he has, thus letting Ace use his moves more often as long as he's aggressive.
• Real-Time Weapon Change: Ace can swap between primary weapons with the press of a button.
• Retraux: The game has a new pixel art style that is closer to that of the PlayStation Mega Man X games, owing to its retro inspiration.
• Rise to the Challenge: An alternate version of the Burning Temple miniboss possible at later levels features you climbing up from a rising lava level while the boss leaps out at you. Once you reach the top the proper boss battle begins, also using alternate mechanics from the normal variant.
• Rocket Punch: Capital Punishment has three jet-powered fists that can be used offensively or orbiting as a shield.
• Rogue Protagonist: The final bosses are variants of 20XX Ace and Nina that have been hijacked by Midgard's systems. The secret encounter for Dustria implies Ace may have subjected himself to this fate willingly.
• Rolling Attack: Many enemies roll to attack. Echobeast, for an examples, rolls to attack.
• Sad Clown: Delta. His home in the Burning Temple was wrecked and abandoned, forcing him to crash in the main cast's orbital base, and all his theatrics and the constant pressure he puts on Ace and Nina is out of a faint flicker of hope the future can change with them at the helm, as he had submitted to Eleanor by safeguarding her technology a long time ago. Acquiring the device from Eleanor he left behind also gives you a note from Delta apologizing for everything, fully aware that he will never be able to say it in any universe — all he can do is put his faith in the contractors as all three of them rise, fight, fall, and adapt for eternity.
• Secret Character: Clearing a run at Entropy Level 5 or higher unlocks Vika, Jest, and Delta as playable characters.
• Secret Level:
  • Obtaining 50 Scrap in one run and going to Dustria sends you to an altered version of the level with a fixed layout. Progressing there requires sacrificing large amounts of HP at various intervals, but all enemies in the level respawn infinitely and do not count as minions, allowing the player to grind out drops and proc the Dracopent and Owlhawk sets' lifesteal effects. Once the goal is reached, you'll find Midgard's core and a note from the version of Ace who became Devotion's End, stating that while he wouldn't be conscious to see it, Midgard controlling his husk was the intended outcome.
  • Obtaining three Prototypes and going to Burning Temple sends you to Delta's home, which has been long since abandoned. There, a key item left to him by Eleanor can be found, along with a note from Delta himself declaring his resignation to the Eternal Recurrence of the base game in the hope that Ace and Nina can use the artifact in his home to stop Eleanor themselves.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: The eight bosses, having been in contact with Eleanor, are speech-capable and aware of the entire conflict the main story requires you to discover. However, they don't reveal this unless you try to speak to them in a Symbol of Peace run, where most of them admit something feels different compared to all the past universes.
• Segmented Serpent: Laser Snake and Laser Serpent are made of multiple segments.
• Serial Escalation: 20XX, while initially looking like it would be about saving the world, was a personal tale of two contractors trying to escape their fate of being test dummies. 30XX, on the other hand, eventually escalates to having the multiverse at stake.
• Set Bonus: Equipping all 4 Core Augs of a set gives a significant bonus. For an example, the Armatort set bonus makes you immune to all the hazards and Oxjack set bonus gives two additional airdashes per jump.
• Shop Fodder: Useless Garbage item, when picked up, does nothing. However, Scrap Dealer takes it in exchange for 5 scrapbits that can be used to buy core slots or various augments.
• Shout-Out:
  • Laser Snake and Laser Serpent are based on the Snake video game. They even die instantly when touching their own tail.
  • The miniboss of Clockzone's name is only given as "???" as its true name would infringe upon copyrights. A slip up in referring to the cogs it throws as spiked shells makes it clear it's meant to be modeled after a Lakitu.
  • The songs used for the editor are named after levels from the Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest series.
  • The Eternal Challenges include titles such as "It's-A-Me", "Keep Moving and Nobody Explodes", and "True Pacifist"
• Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom: Dustria has plenty of crushers moving up and down. Some even have spikes on their sides.
• Solid Clouds: Highvault features dispensers that produce temporary puffs of clouds you can stand on.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The level secret for Dustria doesn't have a different victory theme to go along with "Millennium Spark," meaning the peppy "Clocked Out" plays in the midst of the very disturbing revelation that Devotion's End was always an extension of Ace's will.
• Speedrun Reward: Two achievements are speedrun-based.
  • Speedwalker requires you to complete a run within 32 minutes.
  • Speedy Pilgrim requires you to complete a Pilgrimage 2 run in 40 minutes.
• Spike Balls of Doom: Pink and purple metallic spiky balls act as a common stage hazard. Clockzone features orange and green spikeballs, the former attached to rotating platforms and the latter swinging around.
• Spikes of Doom: Acts as a hazard in some of the stages.
• Spread Shot: Several primary weapons make Nina shoot out spread shots. For an example, The Forkalator and Scatterblast.
• Springs, Springs Everywhere: Springboards are commonly found in Dustria.
• Stalactite Spite: Ceiling crystals in Echocave start to fall when the player is below them.
• Stealth Insult: The game's descriptions of Ace and Jest's color schemes very clearly want to call them ugly or at least insincere/pretentious, but instead politely compare the former to eating pineapple on pizza (which Ace does) and describe the latter as "controversial yet proud."
• Stepford Smiler: Legacy, as the main story and Deepverse's datalore reveals. His creator was an unnamed man from The '90s who struggled with loneliness after a breakup and used his work on Deepverse as a maladaptive coping mechanism. Eventually, the man's work partner Lou is strongly implied to have reprogrammed Legacy to notice his plight, as the guardian starts feigning his enthusiasm to play along with the man's own mask. Legacy may be a jovial slacker, but he and Hoot Omega are the only robots left that understand what the world was like before 2256.
• Sudden Soundtrack Stop: Entering a boss room with the Symbol of Submission or Symbol of Peace causes the background music to stop, to really emphasize that the boss fight that normally happens, isn't.
• Super Window Jump: After destroying the stained glass shapes, Absolution crashes through the window to start the second phase of the fight.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Right before you fight the final boss in a Standard run, you're given access to the shop, a slot machine, two Contemplation Shrines, and two Glory Zones, for one last chance to power yourself up before the big battle.
• Sword and Gun: Delta is able to use both the N-Buster and A-Saber, and can get most of Nina's and Ace's weapons, powers, and techniques. Using both weapon types is even encouraged in a gameplay sense, as hitting an enemy three times with one weapon will let him unleash a fully charged attack with the other.
• Tech Bro: The Symbol of Peace reveals Capital Punishment has the personality of one, speaking with a casual and hip attitude while preaching about the grind his employees are always devoting themselves to. Considering he helped build Midgard's core, it's not hard to see why.
• Temporary Platform: There are various platforms and blocks that either disappear when stood on, switch on/off on time or switch on or off during jump.
• Toggling Setpiece Puzzle: Penumbra features switches which, when shot, alter which blocks are active. They're used as light puzzle elements.
• Token Evil Teammate: Dustria's secret implies Ace agrees with Eleanor's ideas, even if his Golden Ending palette unlock suggests otherwise. Unlike his inspiration, he willingly allowed himself to become the heart of an Omnicidal Maniac and put an unhealthy amount of effort into letting his Alternate Self (and his Nina) know it was a conscious choice, being a bit too altruistic for his own good.
• Training Dummy: After defeating a boss, there is a dummy the players can use to test their powers on.
• Uncommon Time: Battle against Burning Temple boss has 7/4 time signature.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The alternate Dustria level has more of a Metroidvania feel to it, with multiple paths and areas where you need certain abilities to proceed.
• Utility Weapon: Like 20XX, some powers and techniques can help you navigate a stage more easily or give you an advantage in battle. There is also a prototype augment Utilifier MAX that reduces energy cost of powers in exchange of reducing their damage to minimum.
  • Aiming Gear and Aim fusions instantly destroy Whirlbots in Highvault, and rotate Boltpairs in Deepverse.
  • Crushing Void absorbs the gears in Clockzone, growing in size and power, and forces Trap Moles in Echocave to surface.
  • Crystal Wave and Freeze fusions can permanently disable the fireball shooters in Burning Temple, and temporarily freeze Deepverse's disappearing platforms and Hoot Omega.
  • Jagged Bolt can stop Clockzone's miniboss from attacking for a bit, and destroys the moving laser emitters in Deepverse.
  • Negation Pulse, in addition to neutralizing projectiles, temporarily disables the wall laser shooters in Penumbra, and destroys Echobeast's electric projectiles.
  • Rending Whirl can permanently destroy Mega Void Orbs in Penumbra, whereas other hits can only temporarily disable them. It also destroys the voids Absolution throws, and temporarily stops the downwards moving platforms in Clockzone.
  • Zen Mortar destroys the Void Spawners in Penumbra.
  • Echo Shell can reflect enemy gears in Clockzone.
  • Leviathan destroys the Void Spawners in Penumbra. It also provides unique effects if some of Ace's other techniques are used on it.
  • Osafune destroys Mega Void Orbs and Absolution's voids in Penumbra, and Echobeast's electric projectiles.
  • Raijin Call stuns the Clockzone miniboss and destroys the moving lasers in Deepverse, and if it hits an exploding barrel in Dustria, causes projectiles to shoot in eight directions.
  • Ryuusei instantly destroys the stained glass in Absolution's boss fight and the totems in Zen Primus' boss fight. It can also temporarily stop the conveyer belts in Dustria and pop out Trap Moles in Echocave.
  • Zen Ascent ignites tornadoes in Highvault, which instantly destroys Whirlbots. It also gets a height increase if used after passing a Cloud Aura.
  • Dolomite Link latches onto walls as well as enemies, so it's useful for gaining extra horizontal distance.
• Variable Mix:
  • The stage themes transition to a more intense version while you're fighting the miniboss.
  • The Penumbra stage and boss fight segues between different parts of its theme depending on where you are.
  • The Aspera miniboss fight begins by playing "Eternal Devotion"👁 Image
    . After defeating the first phase and a short pause, the second phase has the more intense and frantic "ETERNAL Devotion"👁 Image
    playing.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: It eventually turns out that Eleanor wants to destroy the universe because she knows that The Multiverse is starting to buckle under the weight of countless universes, and that if the universes aren't pruned, then reality itself will collapse. Midgard itself is powered by a version of Ace who, in agreement with Eleanor's ideals, transformed himself into a Mechanical Abomination. The Symbol of Submission terminates runs by revealing all of this to the current Nina and Ace prematurely, pushing them over the Despair Event Horizon and leading them to jump into Midgard's maw, killing them instantly.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Hawk and Draco, the other main contractors from 20XX, are not accounted for at any point in the story.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The description for the sealed essence required to build the REV Device passive-aggressively admonishes Nina for sealing herself away when the world needed her, eventually outlasting the junk storms of 2256, Eleanor's discoveries, and the need for a hero at all — especially once the greater context of Eleanor's motivations are revealed.
• Wingding Eyes: Hoot Omega's eyes turn into X symbols when defeated.
• Wolfpack Boss:
  • Lethal Tempo is composed of four parts working together.
  • The second phase of Aspera's miniboss is fought as a group of three.
• Wrench Whack: Worker enemies throw wrenches at the player.
• Wutai: The Burning Temple stage is themed around Japanese architecture, complete with shrine gates and pagodas in the background.
• Year X: Like its predecessor, the year the game is set in is simply given as 30XX. However, entering Highvault with the completed Chronovane reverses time by 800 years (as indicated by the in-game timer rewinding with it) to the meteor storm from 2256, indicating that the main story is set precisely in the year 3056.
• Zero-Effort Boss:
  • In Deepverse, bringing a full Vagrant set prevents Legacy from attacking and sets his HP to one.
  • If you get the Symbol of Submission or the Symbol of Peace, every boss from then on lets you pass without a fight. If the Symbol of Peace is equipped, you can additionally speak to each boss (or ruminate upon them, in the case of the sleeping Echobeast and Experiment 9), who will all recognize something has changed and urge you to continue forward to Aspera.