Test Subject Arena 2

Test Subject Arena 2 is fighting arena game that was released on October 16th 2013. It was first announced by Nitrome on August 14 2013. The game is a sequel to Test Subject Arena, and is the second spin off in the Test Subject series. This game, on release, was Nitrome Touchy compatible for up to four people.

Controls
Player 1 W - Jump (during gameplay), crouch (as Rex209 Professor or Rex209 Blue), go up on to ceiling (if ceiling can be touched in one jump; only as Rex209 Professor or Rex209 Blue), move up (while selecting character) A - Move left (during gameplay), move left (while on character selection screen) S - Crouch (during gameplay), go down (on character selection screen) D - Move right (during gameplay), move right (during character selection screen) Q - Use weapon (during gameplay), use melee attack (during gameplay, when near a player), select character (on character selection screen) Player 2 up - Jump (during gameplay), crouch (as Rex209 Professor or Rex209 Blue), go up on to ceiling (if ceiling can be touched in one jump; only as Rex209 Professor or Rex209 Blue), move up (while selecting character) left - Move left (during gameplay), move left (while on character selection screen) down - Crouch (during gameplay), go down (on character selection screen) right - Move right (during gameplay), move right (during character selection screen) ? - Use weapon (during gameplay), use melee attack (during gameplay, when near a player), select character (on character selection screen) Player 3 (Nitrome Touchy only) D-pad - Move Button one - Jump Button two - shoot Player 4 (Nitrome Touchy only) D-pad - Move Button one - Jump Button two - shoot

Nitrome Touchy
D-pad - Move Button one - Jump Button two - shoot

Single-player mode
Upon selecting one character from the character selection screen and continuing (pressing the →), the player is taken to a custom made stage for that player, with the objective of destroying forty targets in fifteen seconds. Two types of targets are encountered in these levels: a regular target and a key card. Regular targets (referred to here as just targets) are destroyed with a single bullet from the player, or a melee attack, and add two seconds to the player's time.

The second type of targets are key cards, which appear uncommonly and cannot be destroyed, but still have to be eliminated. In order to be eliminated, the player has to go up to them and physically touch them. Although they take up more time to destroy (they are unable to be destroyed from a distance, unlike regular targets), they add five seconds to the player's timer. As soon as the level starts, a target is placed at a certain point of the level, which the player has to eliminate. As soon as it is eliminated, another target will pop up in other part of the level.

Nitrome has stated that they made single player levels "fairly hard".

If the player manages to destroy all the targets, an avatar with a picture corresponding to the character played with will be awarded.

General strategies

 * Fired projectiles (bullets) move faster than the player, and also will go into and out of teleporters. With this in mind, the player should shoot projectiles at far away targets that they can hit, instead of walking close to the target and shooting it.
 * If the player is a projectile shooting character, they should shoot at far away targets instead of going close up to them. If they do this, while the bullet is heading towards the destructible target, the player should head to where the next target will be.
 * The player should only focus on destroying the targets and not pay attention to the remaining time they have left or how many targets hey have left to destroy.

Two players
In two player multiplayer mode, the objective of each level is to deplete the opposing player of all their points. Each level has multiple spawn points, chosen at random for the player to spawn. Levels are made up of an infinite amount of rounds. At the start of each round, the two combatants are spawned with the objective to kill the other. Players take one hit to kill, and upon one player dying, that player loses two points while the opposing player gains two points, and the round ends.

Once a round ends, another round commences, and the two players are assigned to different spawn points. This continues on until one player has lost all of their points. In order for a round to end, only one player has to die, and this death does not have to have been done by the opposing player; the player can kill themself by shooting themself with their own projectile, or by being killed by the Surveillance Droid MKII (in the levels where it appears).

Two player multiplayer mode can either be played with both players using a computer's keyboard, both using Nitrome Touchy, or one using a keyboard while one uses Nitrome Touchy.

Three/four players
There are some differences in thee/four player multiplayer that two player multiplayer does not have.

Three player multiplayer can either be played with two players using a computer's keyboard while one uses Nitrome Touchy, or two use Nitrome Touchy while one uses a computer's keyboard, or all three use Nitrome Touchy. Four player multiplayer can either be played with two players using a single keyboard while the remaining two use Nitrome Touchy, three use Touchy while one uses a keyboard, or all use Touchy.

Characters and statistics
Test Subject Arena 2 has eight playable characters, each with their own single player stages. All characters are not the same, rather, each character (usually) has a special ability, and how good they perform certain universal actions measured by their statistics. All characters have four stats, how good the stat is for that character being measured by zero to seven bars. These stats are: The characters in Test Subject Arena 2 are:
 * Ability: How good a character's special ability is. More bars means a good ability, while less bars means a poor ability.
 * Weapon Power: Weapon Power determines the strength of a player's bullet. In the situation where two players are firing at each other so that both player's bullets are impacting each other, the player with the higher Weapon Power will cause their bullets to destroy the bullets of the player with the lower weapon power (opposing player). The higher Weapon Power player's bullet will destroy the bullet of an opposing player, and this remaining, higher Weapon Power bullet will be able to impact another lower Weapon Player player bullet before the higher Weapon Power bullet explodes.
 * Weapon Speed: How fast a fired bullet moves. This stat does not apply to the Professor, and also applies to the orange enzyme's thrown projectiles. More bars means faster moving bullet speed, less bars means slower moving bullet speed.
 * Melee: Unknown


 * Professor
 * Professor in Rex209
 * Mercenary
 * Orange enzyme


 * Blue in Rex209
 * Blue in the Proto-Suit
 * Doctor Nastidious
 * Green

Below are each character's stats.

August 14 2013
On August 14 2013, Nitrome released a preview image of the game on their blog. They also announced that the player would be able to choose from eight different characters to play as.

September 25 2013
On September 25 2013, Nitrome announced more information about the game in a blog post. They announced that the game will be Nitrome Touchy compatible for up to four players, and that certain characters will have special abilities. For example, Rex209 will be able to hang on ceilings. They also stated that they would be looking into a single player mode for this game, something they didn't have in the original game, Test Subject Arena. They also released a preview image for the game.

Nitrome Touchy
Test Subject Arena 2 was made Nitrome Touchy compatible on October 16 2013.

Death during single player
It is possible for a character to kill itself with its own weapon in single-player mode. If this happens, the timer will continue until the time runs out, despite the character not being on the screen.

Single player score of zero
Destroying a level's final target while the timer reaches zero immediately causes the player to win with a score of zero. This score is not 00.00, but just 0.

Unused score
If the player fails a level, internally in the game's coding, they are assigned a score of zero (0, not 00.00). However, completing a level by destroying the final target simultaneously as the timer reaches zero causes the player to win the level with a score of zero. A score of zero is not obtainable without glitches. Submitting this score to the game high scores causes the player's name for that score and the score to not come up.

Exclusion of The Machine
Although Test Subject Arena 2 incorporated all small sprites from Test Subject Complete, the only character that had a small sprite who was not included in the game was The Machine. John Kennedy has explained that it was not included in the game due to it being to overpowered, likely due to its speed, constant firing and its moving laser that moves in a half-circle (there is no character weapon in Test Subject Arena 2 that is comparable to this). Because of this, The Machine's weapon would have to be toned down somehow.

Along with this, The Machine's walking sprite is much bigger than regular character sprites, causing it to not fit in some levels. Furthermore, taking this into consideration would more restrict the creation of arenas. It was because of this that The Machine was excluded from Test Subject Arena 2. It is also notable to point out that The Machine was never coded into the game, and as such, does not constitute as unused content.

Trivia

 * On the release of the game, several high scores were already placed on the high scores tables by Nitrome. These scores read out messages, supposedly written by each of the corresponding characters. These messages can be distinguished by looking at the scores that are at the end of the high scores table and are descending from n seconds to 0.00.


 * Although the mercenary's message contains random words, the first letters of every word are actually an acronym for "Winner".
 * Blue's Rex209's challenge resembles Level 5 of Test Subject Complete.