Krillocity vs Krillion Unlimited: The Race Against the Dive

Krillocity and Krillion Unlimited are two ways of playing the same idea. Both hand you an open prompt such as Name a fruit, judge your answer against a bank of what other people say, and reward you for the answers almost nobody gives. Krillion asks for one answer a prompt and sinks your krill toward the bottom of the ocean. Krillocity asks for as many answers as you can type in 30 seconds and swims your krill along a course against everyone else in the room.

Krillocity is Krillion's race mode rather than a separate game, and most of what sits behind the two is shared. The play, though, pulls in almost opposite directions.

• Krillion is a dive: one answer per prompt, and the rarest correct answer you can find. Time only breaks ties.
• Krillocity is a race: every answer you can get out before the clock runs out, rarer ones swimming further, with places decided against the people on the track.
• Shared: the prompts, the judge, the six tiers and their metres, the wallet, the avatars and the emotes.
• Different: the clock, the modes, how a round ends, what pays tokens and how the leaderboards rank.

In Krillion your first accepted answer ends the prompt. Type an answer that fits and press Dive; if it is refused, the prompt stays open and you can try another until the 25-second clock runs out, and an answer still in the box at the end is sent for you. One answer is all that will ever count, so the skill is restraint: setting aside the first answers that come to mind, because most players think of those too, and choosing the rarest one you are sure of.

In Krillocity nothing ends the prompt but the clock, or your own Pass. The box clears every time you press Enter, up to three answers are with the judge at once, and every accepted answer adds its metres. The clock is 30 seconds, and the skill is the opposite of restraint: get the obvious answers out fast, then switch corners and hunt for the rare ones while there is time.

The same answer earns the same tier in both. A Plankton swims or sinks you 100 m, a One in a Krillion 1,000 m. But in Krillion that Plankton was your whole prompt; in Krillocity it is one of a dozen answers, and still worth typing.

• The prompts. Krillocity's races and daily draw on Krillion's whole pool, and each prompt carries the same difficulty label, from Very easy to Very hard.
• The judge. One bank of answers for each prompt, ranked by how often people give them, and the same AI judge for anything the bank does not know. An answer the judge accepts in one game is known to the other.
• The tiers. Plankton, Too Clever, Schooler, Rare, Deep Cut and One in a Krillion, worth 10, 15, 30, 60, 85 and 100 points, with every point worth 10 m.
• The wallet. One purse of depth tokens, spent in one shop. Whatever you earn or buy in either game is yours in both.
• The look. The same avatars and emotes, the same pink krill, the same pixel art and lettering.
• Your name and account. The name you use in one game's lobby is your name in the other's, and signing in with a free Daily account keeps all of it on every device.

Modes

• Krillion has Classic, a set dive of 7 prompts with a top score of 700 points; Endless, which deals prompts until three tanks of air run out; live rooms of up to 40 players; and 1 vs 1, a rated match of seven prompts against one opponent. It has no daily.
• Krillocity has the daily, seven prompts the same for everyone with one try a day, and live races of up to 16, public or private, running back to back.

Direction and distance

Krillion dives down: your score is your depth, through an ocean that runs past a perfect Classic dive's 7,000 m. Krillocity swims forward along a seabed course of 50 km from a chequered start line, through three underwater worlds. A good Krillocity race covers several kilometres, because a race of seven prompts can hold dozens of answers.

What pays tokens

Krillion pays a depth token for every metre you dive, in every mode. Krillocity pays for places, never metres: 2,350 tokens for every scoring racer who finished behind you, counting up to eleven, and 1,150 for the win, so a full public race pays its winner 27,000. A dive's metres are always worth something; a race's metres are worth exactly as much as the places they buy. The daily pays nothing at all.

What the leaderboards rank

Krillion's boards rank what you dive in its rooms and, in 1 vs 1, a rating that rises and falls with each match. Krillocity's board ranks race points, 3, 2 and 1 for a public race's top three, over a day, a week and all time, and the winner of each race wears a crown in the room until somebody beats them.

How the room feels

A Krillion room waits on every player's single answer and reveals them all together. A Krillocity room is a stream: every lane moves as its answers land, overtakes are called out as they happen, and between prompts a board shows every answer each racer gave.

Krillion is built so that speed never pays. Time breaks a tie and nothing else, because paying for speed would pay for the first answer that comes to mind, which is the one answer Krillion exists to make worthless.

Krillocity lets speed back in, but not on its own. The fastest answers are still the commonest, worth 100 m each, while one Rare is worth six of them and a One in a Krillion ten. A racer who only types fast fills the clock with Plankton; a racer who only thinks hard names too few. The tactics guide is about striking that balance.

• "Skip the first answer" is Krillion's best advice and Krillocity's worst. In a race, type it: it is a free 100 m.
• Hunting for one perfect answer wins Krillion prompts and loses Krillocity ones, unless you have already emptied the obvious answers.
• What does carry over is knowing where rare answers live. A player who reaches for another country, another decade or a field they know well finds Deep Cuts in either game.

The two start screens are joined. On Krillion's, a speech bubble asks Psst… Switch it up? with a Play Krillocity key and a count of who is racing. On a computer the camera sinks through Krillion's water into the race's; on a phone a wave of bubbles carries you across. Krillocity's Main menu takes you back the same way.

• A few quiet minutes, alone: Krillion's Classic dive. Seven prompts, no rush.
• One shared contest a day: Krillocity's daily, where you can compare with everyone who raced the same seven.
• A lively room: a Krillocity public race, where something changes every second.
• A test of nerve against one person: Krillion's 1 vs 1.
• Friends on a call or round a table: either has private rooms, but Krillocity's race is the louder evening.

New to the race? The beginner's guide to Krillocity follows one from the first count-in to the payout, and what a race pays explains where the shared wallet's race tokens come from.