Official Characters | Fan Characters | Fan Remixes
This page details tropes that apply to Steam Workshop remakes of official stages. Note that tropes appearing in their respective source materials are not listed.
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Bonus (Fan Difficulties)
Uploaded by: VerdeBlue
Fan-made Easy and Nightmare versions of three bonus stages: Crossfire, Timebrain, and Quartet; with all the difficulty changes and custom Nightmare color schemes to boot.- Balance Buff: In Nightmare Timebrain, many maze puzzles are changed to make the correct answer less obvious, including the once-unused set.
- Brutal Bonus Level: Even moreso than most official Nightmare stages! Nightmare Crossfire consists of wantonly buffed attacks meant to be endured for no less time than normal, Nightmare Timebrain has its form revamped via newly invulnerable pixels and patched-up mazes, and Nightmare Quartet forces the curse of the Factory pickup on you!
- Dark Is Evil: The Nightmare Quartet bosses have dark-colored parts, and they're stated to be more blatantly violent than ever.
- Friendly Fireproof: Easy Crossfire and Quartet have a version of the Drone item that plays this straight. Not only do the Attack Drone proper and its bullets no longer damage the player on contact (coded into the item's official counterpart, which isn't implemented in Easy mode though), but they're also colored aqua instead of red to reflect this.
- Homing Projectile: The second Nightmare Crossfire miniboss can shoot Prospector's homing bullets that explode into kite-shaped fragments.
- Laser Sight: The pink Nightmare Quartet boss drops the namesake pickup originally seen in the Credits. It's a Breakable Powerup like Spawner is, causing you to emit a thin beam that deals very light damage and assists in aiming.
- Purple Is Powerful: Nightmare Quartet's guns and cages are purple, emphasizing that the bosses are more powerful.
- Purple Is the New Black: Said purple coloration is most often dark, mimicking stereotypical obsidian but not dark enough to blend in with the background.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning:
- As displayed in the main menu, the final miniboss of Nightmare Crossfire has a red eye (and red centers of its parts in general).
- An unusual case with Nightmare Quartet, whose human-like eyes have light red scherae, giving the impression that they are bloodshot.
- Taken for Granite: The pink Nightmare Quartet boss can spin around Medusa's petrifying laser.
Chippy the Anime
Uploaded by: W1ND
A series of stages that pit Chippy against versions of bosses with more humanoid shapes. Though the stages proper are now inaccessible due to poor gameplay and bugs associated with Redux play, the campaigns are mentioned in the January 2020 Community Update
.- Cute Monster Girl: These campaigns anthropomorphize Kraken, Guardian, Overgrowth, Anomaly, Phobia, Medusa, Goliath, Hermit, Monarch, and Prospector into "anime waifus" that retain their Starfish Alien traits.
- Moe Anthropomorphism: Many smaller forms are designed to be adorable in a childlike fashion.
Completely "Normal" Bosses
Uploaded by: WestieNZ
A thinly-veiled package of bosses that have variations of Overgrowth's pixel regeneration mechanic, adding a surprising amount of depth to them.- Aggressive Play Incentive:
- This campaign's remix of Nightmare Execution involves boss regeneration that only occurs when you kill smaller cultists, punishing players for focusing on the cultists instead of powering up the lasers used against the boss.
- One common criticism of the original Xulgon is that you can easily ride out minion waves, keeping a distance from them and letting them pass the stage by. This campaign's rendition of Xulgon regenerates quickly when both him and any minions are active, and said minions cannot go below the arena to despawn anymore, incentivizing players to eliminate them as quickly as possible.
- Balance Buff:
- Medusa's stage has Xulgon's minions appear earlier and more frequently. Furthermore, the boss's Gem Tissue is as nigh-indestructible as its Nightmare counterpart's, and each pink pixel will turn into a fast, indestructible snake on destruction.
- Some of Guardian's attacks appear in tighter spreads.
- Xulgon's stage starts with three green-eyed minions above him instead of two, and the last two waves have more enemies, with the latter having a red-eyed minion and yellow-eyed versions of the green-eyed ones as well!
- Company Cross References:
- The Melted Freeze item originates as a pseudo-Nitro Boost from Volcanion's fight in WestieNZ's Champion Campaign.
- The new yellow-eyed minion can spray square bullets, just like Volcanion does.
- Easter Egg: Fulfilling a certain secret condition in each stage gives you a scavenger hunt trophy, which gives you both the accomplishment of finding it and a clue for a different trophy.
- Elite Mooks: There exists a version of Xulgon's green-eyed minion that has a yellow eye, more core health, and a variety of new and difficult attacks.
- Gradual Regeneration:
- Neophyte's lime tentacles, Kraken's brightly colored flesh, Phobia's first two forms, and Medusa's reptilian pixels periodically grow back in these versions of their stages.
- Overgrowth's foliage regeneration works the same as usual, except heals are much more frequent throughout the fight, especially near the end.
- Healing Boss: This campaign gives extra regeneration abilities to Neophyte, Kraken, Overgrowth, Phobia, Medusa, Guardian, Nightmare Execution, and Xulgon.
- Healing Factor:
- Getting hit by Kraken's bubbles will massively regrow its flesh.
- Hitting Medusa's orange snakes' blue tips or despawning blue-tailless snakes by any means will cause the boss's pixels (of all kinds) to greatly regrow.
- Shooting Guardian's invulnerable pixels too much will cause its pixels to grow back as well.
- A pair of laser barricades will grow back for each cultist killed in the Nightmare Execution stage. If the lasers already reached the boss, killing cultists will make some of the boss's pixels grow back instead.
- Whenever any of Xulgon's minions (whether the first three or ones spawned in waves) are active, he will be healed at a rate that renders him practically invincible.
- Heal Thyself: The first time Phobia's third form loses all of its guns, its whole body will swiftly grow back, and it will attain the drops of its Nightmare counterpart, along with easier versions of its new attacks.
- Joke Item: Some powerups, namely Xulgon's cursed one, have been replaced with the Melted Freeze item. In spite of its original purpose, it's meant to do nothing against him, Neophyte, and Phobia. Averted in Medusa's and Xulgon's stages, where its burst will cause homing snakes to temporarily move away from you.
- Mythology Gag: Guardian's Heal Thyself mechanic in this campaign is a nod to the Counter-Attack that appears when shooting invulnerable pixels of Nightmare Guardian.
- Nerf: The lengths of time where Xulgon remains away from the arena are increased to make defeating all minions beforehand possible.
- Recognizable by Sound: Squeaky beeps play when you shoot Guardian's indigo armor, and they are higher-pitched when the boss is closer to healing itself.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: As Guardian's indigo armor is shot and it gets closer to healing itself, the background becomes redder.
- Shock and Awe: The new yellow-eyed minion can fire lightning bolts at you.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: The campaign's title and description insist that nothing was changed, and the difficulty in the game is labeled as "easy" for added irony.
Legacy Prospector
Uploaded by: WestieNZ
The pre-Redux version of Prospector, ported to the latest version of the game with the only fixed bugs being ones that prevent the stage from being uploaded.- Flunky Boss: Prospector summons the Legacy form of two unused minions when its second form appears. The minions' main cores only attack you if you get close, but you must destroy them both to defeat Prospector's third form.
Remixes of the Past
Uploaded by: VerdeBlue
Custom versions of Prospector, Monarch, and Medusa that change them up with unused elements and other means of increasing their quality. Slow-Strat Invaders
Uploaded by: VerdeBlue
Versions of Prospector, Storm, and Xulgon with certain powerups changed to prevent the fastest methods of defeating the bosses. Both normal and Nightmare difficulties are available. Variance (Mechanic Demonstration)
Uploaded by: VerdeBlue
Remixes of Guardian, Anomaly, and Phobia that demonstrate the unique gameplay changes brought by the upcoming Variance campaign.- Balance Buff: Due to dissatisfaction with how certain Redux items function, several unambiguous upgrades were implemented:
- The two attack items introduced in the Redux update were changed to make them far more useful:
- Barrage bullets deal slightly more damage at a distance, and the flow of time is slowed weakly enough for the item to save you time overall.
- The Spread Shot Broadside was reworked into a small, short-range burst that mars away many pixels close to your ship's side.
- Dash was changed to make it more similar to its pre-Redux version, with a strong forwards boost, the ability to use the item while undergoing Mercy Invincibility, and Redux's addition of a backwards dash move.
- Spawner, the passive offense pickup that is lost if you are hit with it, has its projectiles appear closer to the player. The pickup can also be stacked up to 3.
- Fast-Forward's five-second time-flow increase was increased from 40% to 80%, so each use of the item saves you four seconds, due to the stages' time-attack nature.
- The two attack items introduced in the Redux update were changed to make them far more useful:
- Laser Cutter: This campaign's Laser Sight item fully averts this trope. Aside from its range being lowered to that of your gun, the beam deals no damage on its own.
- Multiplayer-Only Item: The unused Eject and Recall items are revamped and implemented into co-op versions of the stages. Eject drops powerups at a controlled angle to allow your partner to collect them, and Recall instantly teleports your partner near you.
- Nerf:
- Convert combines elements of both official versions to make it harder to render game-breaking: you convert bullets using a shorter version of the Redux version's window of time to hit the bullets, but like in pre-Redux, the Damage pickups float away, so you must move to manually grab them.
- The hidden temporary invulnerability for Blink and Recall is lowered from a fifth of a second to the tenth that Dodge has. They now share a separate effect with its own file.
