Test Subject Arena 2

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Test Subject Arena 2

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Test Subject Arena 2
Description
Up to 4 players can battle it out in this action packed platform shooter.
Development
Released	Flash/Nitrome Touchy: October 16th 2013 HTML5: November 11th, 2022
Credits	Art Markus Heinel Programming John Kennedy Music Dave Cowen
Websites	Nitrome.com
Gameplay
Play it	Nitrome.com
Game type	Multiplayer game
Genre	Arena, shooter
Levels	28 (8 single player + 20 multiplayer)
Controls	See Controls
Music
Main	Menu Game 1 Game 2
Other
Prequel: Test Subject Arena

Test Subject Arena 2 is an arena shooter game that was released on October 16th 2013. It was first announced by Nitrome on August 14th 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 and features a new single player mode.

A HTML5 port of the game was released on Nitrome.com on November 11th, 2022.

Controls

Player 1/2
/ - Jump, crouch (as Rex209 Professor or Rex209 Blue on a ceiling), move up (menus)
/ - Move left (gameplay/menus)
/ - Move right (gameplay/menus)
/ - Crouch, drop down (as Rex209 Professor or Rex209 Blue on a ceiling), move down (menus)
/ - Use weapon, use melee attack (when near another player), select character (on character selection screen)
- Select (menus)

Player 3/4 (Nitrome Touchy only)
D-pad - Move
Button one - Jump
Button two - Shoot

Gameplay

Single-player mode

Upon selecting one character from the character selection screen and continuing (pressing the button), 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.

Multi-player mode

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 him/herself by shooting him/herself with their own projectile, or by being killed by the The Machine (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

The only difference three/four player multiplayer has from two player multiplayer is the controls players can use and the combinations.

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, with some characters having specific mechanics, though how good they perform certain universal actions is measured by their statistics. All characters have four stats that are listed on the character selection menu and measured by zero to seven bars. These stats are:

• Ability ^[sic]: How fast a character moves. The higher a character's Ability is, the higher their horizontal speed will be. This does not affect vertical speed from falling and jumping, as vertical movement is constant across all eight characters.
• Weapon Power: Weapon Power determines the strength of a character's bullet. If two opposing bullets were to collide, the one with the higher Weapon Power will destroy the other and continue traveling forwards. If both projectiles have the same Weapon Power, both will be destroyed at the same time. Each time a bullet collides with another one, it will loose two points of weapon power, which limits its ability to travel through multiple bullets at once. For instance, a bullet fired by Blue (Weapon Power of 5) can destroy up to two bullets fired by Doctor Nastidious (Weapon Power of 3) before it is eventually destroyed by a third one.
• Weapon Speed: The character's rate of fire. A high Weapon Speed indicates a low delay between each shot, and therefore a higher shooting frequency. Unlike other stats listed on the character selection menu, Weapon Speed is highly inaccurate to the actual in-game firing frequency of each character.
• Melee: Melee both indicates how fast a character performs their melee attack and how far they can reach other players with it. A higher Melee usually indicates a faster response time to attacking the opposing character, as well as a bigger hitbox on the attack. Green and the Professor (when airborne) are even able to hit players that are behind them using their melee attack.

The characters in Test Subject Arena 2 are:

Blue in the Proto-Suit Blue in Rex209 Professor Professor in Rex209

Doctor Nastidious Green Orange enzyme Mercenary

Below are each character's stats.

Ability: Weapon Power: Weapon Speed: Melee:

Ability: Weapon Power: Weapon Speed: Melee:

Ability: Weapon Power: Weapon Speed: Melee:

Ability: Weapon Power: Weapon Speed: Melee:

Ability: Weapon Power: Weapon Speed: Melee:

Ability: Weapon Power: Weapon Speed: Melee:

Ability: Weapon Power: Weapon Speed: Melee:

Ability: Weapon Power: Weapon Speed: Melee:

However, some more accurate statistics can be determined about the characters, as listed in the table bellow:

• Speed: Horizontal speed in tiles per second.
• Fire rate: Shooting frequency in shots per second. Some characters have a different fire rate when crouching (as displayed in brackets in the table).
• Bullet speed: Bullet velocity in tiles per second.
• Melee delay: Delay at which the character is able to perform a melee attack on an opponent in seconds. A lower delay indicates a faster response time.

Char.	Speed	Weapon Power	Fire rate	Bullet speed	Melee	Melee delay
	12.6	5	2.8	27.3	4	0.17
	10.0	4	5.4	30.3	2	0.15
	14.1	x	5.6 (4.1)	x	6	0.10
	10.0	4	4.9	30.3	4	0.15
	12.9	3	4.9	27.3	4	0.10
	12.6	5	2.5	27.3	7	0.07
	13.8	7	2.6 (3.0)	27.3	3	0.18
	09.3	3	8.9	27.3	4	0.08

Levels

Single player mode

Blue

• 

  Blue's level

• 

  Blue's targets

Video
Provided ID could not be validated.

Rex209 Blue

• 

  Blue Rex209's level

• 

  Rex209 Blue's targets

Video
Provided ID could not be validated.

Professor

• 

  Professor's level

• 

  Professor's targets

Video
Provided ID could not be validated.

Rex209 Professor

• 

  Professor Rex209's level

• 

  Professor Rex209's targets

Video
Provided ID could not be validated.

Dr. Nastidious

• 

  Doctor Nastidious level

• 

  Dr. Nastidious targets

Video
Provided ID could not be validated.

Green

• 

  Green's level

• 

  Green's targets

Video
Provided ID could not be validated.

Orange enzyme

• 

  Orange enzyme's level

• 

  Orange enzyme's targets

Video
Provided ID could not be validated.

Mercenary

• 

  Mercenary's level

• 

  Mercenary's targets

Video
Provided ID could not be validated.

Ending

This collapsible box contains a spoiler! Use [show] to reveal.

Upon completing the eighth and final unbeaten level, and the player has come to that character's level completion screen, clicking the left-most button with the ← pointing into a square, the player will be brought to a screen that states that they have completed all challenges. A present is on this image, and clicking it grans the player the avatar of the The Machine.

• 

  The image

• Test Subject Arena 2 - Ending The Machine avatar

  Video walkthrough

Multiplayer mode

Gallery

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6 Level 7 Level 8 Level 9 Level 10 Level 11 Level 12 Level 13 Level 14 Level 15 Level 16 Level 17 Level 18 Level 19 Level 20

Previews

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.

• 

  The preview image

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.

• 

  The blog image

Gallery

• 

  The blog image on the release of the game

Nitrome Touchy

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

Gallery

The controls The P1 controls The P2 controls The P3 controls The P4 controls The controls for Proto-Suit Blue The controls for Rex-Suit Blue The controls for Professor The controls for Professor REX The controls for Doctor Nastidious The controls for Green The controls for Orange The controls for Mercenary

Glitches

• Portal clipping glitches - Various glitches involving teleporters which allow the player to end up on the wrong way of a portal upon traversing it.
• Turnaround sliding - An animation glitch that freezes a character's sprite while they walk. Blue in Rex209 and Professor in Rex209 may use this glitch to gain a lot of horizontal speed or shoot through thin walls.
• Idle walking - An animation glitch that makes characters stay in their walking animation despite not moving.
• Flickering falling animation - An animation glitch that makes characters flicker while falling off a platform.
• Shooting aerial jump - A glitch that lets the player perform a short air jump after falling off a platform.
• Box clipping - A collision glitch that allows Blue in Rex209 and Professor in Rex209 to fall through the floor in some specific locations.
• Ceiling lamps - A collision glitch involving ceiling lamps in levels themed after Doctor Nastidious' base.
• Level 18 - A collision glitch in level 18 of the multiplayer mode.
• Background Mercenary animation looping/freezing - Improper looping and freezing of the Mercenary in the background of all test chamber themed levels.
• Orange enzyme suicide - A way for the Orange enzyme to kill themselves without using any teleporter.
• Death during target challenges - A glitch occurring if the player kills themselves during the single-player mode.
• Target challenges score of zero - A glitch occurring if the player finishes a single-player challenge with 0 seconds left.

• 

  An example of portal clipping

• 

  Turnaround sliding with Blue in Rex209's additional behaviour

• 

  A shooting aerial jump

• 

  Box clipping

• 

  Orange enzyme suicide

Development

The game was first announced on August 14 2013. On September 25 2013 Nitrome released another preview, elaborating on the game and also how they were testing out a single player mode but were not sure if it would make it into the game. The game was released on October 16 2013.

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, due to it being deemed too overpowered and the size of its walking sprite causing it to not fit in some levels. It was also due to its size that using it in the game would restrict the creation of arenas.

When asked about what was used for the voice of the announcer, Nitrome replied that it is "probably" the text-to-speech program that comes with every Macintosh computer.

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 centiseconds to 0.00.

Gallery

Blue's message Blue Rex209's message Professor's message Professor Rex209's message Doctor Nastidious' message Green's message Orange enzyme's message Mercenary's message

• Although the mercenary's message seemingly contains random words, it spells out "WINNER" in the NATO phonetic alphabet, which associates ever letter of the alphabet to a word.

• Blue Rex209's challenge is a slightly modified version of Level 5 from Test Subject Complete, with all enemies removed and more button-activated platforms.

• 

  Blue Rex209's challenge

• 

  Level 5 of Test Subject Complete

• Green's challenge is a modified version of level 10 from Test Subject Blue, with all interactive objects and hazards removed and some changes to the teleporter and wall layouts.

• 

  Green's challenge

• 

  Level 10 of Test Subject Blue

• Unusually, the image for the game's page displayed on search engine results such as Google's has exclusive art not used anywhere else in the game.

• 

  The image

• The Multiplayer mode it the Timer will can count up same as Test Subject Complete.
• The Test Subject Arena 2 Have more Locations same as Test Subject Complete.