Rick Henderson Beginners Guide

Normal Endless mode

Good for beginners, things start out a bit slow.

Hard Endless mode

Good for seasoned players, it’s like starting on loops two (bosses have more hp, bullets that spawn on enemies death, faster enemy bullets, shorter cooldown between enemy shots, Napalm Missiles, regenerating shields and so on).

Insane Endless mode – coming soon

Same as hard endless mode instead it’s like starting on loop 4, everything is very fast and unforgiving.

Boss Raid – coming soon

You fight only bosses in a succession from 1-5. Goal is to eliminate them as fast as possible. There are sixty boss combinations and they change each six days.

Game is made out of loops and levels

One loop consists of five levels with each containing a boss in one of three variations. At the end of each level when you kill the boss, you get to pick from 4 out of 20 random perks to upgrade your ship.

Bosses do not repeat themselves unti loop 4 (when you empty the bosses pool for each faction boss)

Loop 1, Level 1

You are attacked only by Pirates.

Loop 1, Level 2

You are attacked by Pirates and Rift Miners.

Loop 1, Level 3,

You are attacked by Pirates, Rift Miners and Terrans.

Loop 1, Level 4

You are attacked by Pirates, Rift Miners, Terrans and Paragons.

Loop 1, Level 5

You are attacked by Pirates, Rift Miners, Terrans, Paragons and Sundyne.

From Loop 2, all enemy factions are attacking you with some additional stuff.

Each loop, all enemies and bosses bullets are faster and faster.
Each loop, all enemies and bosses have a shorter cooldown between shots.
Each loop, all enemies and bosses that fire bullets in a succession now fire more and more bullets.
Each loop, all bosses gain additional health
Hunter Seekers leave a Napalm explosion on death
All enemy missiles and mines leave a Napalm explosion on death.
All enemies spawn a randomly aimed bullet on death (with number of bullets increasing with loops)

Planned: Shields turn on after being destroyed (with a small cooldown of course).

You can choose from a selection of three ships with their pilots

Rick
Ben
Thoraxx

Rick

Middle grounds ship with a speed of 1.0 and 10 points of health. Special ability is Hologram which draws away TARGETED enemy bullets. Use hologram when encountering a large group of enemies that use targeted or homing bullets (Provokers, Asteroid Cannons and similar). Hologram also attracts some of the enemies that home into you like Drillers and Avengers.

Ben

Light ship with a speed of 1.1 and 9 points of health. Special ability is Microwarp which quickly moves you from place to place. It does not teleport you though bullets can’t hit you nor you can hit enemies while warping. Great to get out of tough situations with lots of bullets. While warping, the graze counter is deactivated so you can’t use it to fill up the graze meter easily.

Thoraxx

Heavy ship with a speed of 0.9 and 11 point of health. Special ability is Artillery Strike which launches 20 missiles from left to right.

Weapons come in three categories: Bullet, Energy, Missile

Bullet weapons

They have no damage modifier to shields or heavy enemies and most of them have some sort of drawback (usually recoil).

Energy Weapons

They deal double damage to shields, half of damage to armored enemies, and regular damage to normal armor enemies.

Missile Weapons

They deal half damage to shields, double damage to armored enemies, and regular damage to normal armor enemies.

Enemies dealt normal damage will blink red.
Enemies dealt half damage will blink orange.
Enemies dealt double damage will blink purple.

Additional indicator will be added, but all the big enemies are armored (including bosses).

Ranks

There is total of 6 rank color to pickup throughout the game:

Red
Blue
Orange
White
Purple
Green

When you fill the Rank bar with all six colours, you get a promotion after defeating the next boss. Most of the enemies and all bosses drop ranks for you to pickup. When you end your run, your score gets multiplied by your attained rank to get the final score.

Ranks you can attain are following:

Recruit – 0% multiplier
Private – 10% multiplier
Corporal – 20% multiplier
Sergeant – 30% multiplier
Lieutenant – 40% multiplier
Captain – 50% multiplier
Major – 60% multiplier
Colonel – 70% multiplier
Marshal – 80% multiplier
General – 90% multiplier
Commander – 100% multiplier

Picking up ranks also get you a small amount of points.