The categories used to be just 'itemless' and 'any%'. Yesterday i added 'pacifist itemless' and 'perfect rescue itemless', and subcategories for everything: 'all mission', '1st mission', and '4th mission'.

The subcategories i'm thinking of like a difficulty level. It's easiest (and fastest) to do just the first mission, and then fourth mission is medium (more bullets, different placement of secrets), and the hardest is all missions (going from easy to hard during the course of the run is an extra bit of difficulty).

I didn't even know a pacifist run was possible until last month, though i've wanted to do it for a long time. My plan is to work my way up through the mission subcategories until i can do a full game pacifist run.

Perfect rescue shows off a lot of underground rooms, which the other runs don't do. I'm not super interested in this category right now, but i like that the game actually recognizes it, and i want categories that show off different aspects of the game. It does have a nice pacing to it.

I tagged the new categories with 'itemless' because i prefer playing without the vest and radio. It's harder and more like the experience of playing the game without knowing any secrets. The radio doesn't make sense in perfect rescue because using it, you skip some prisoners. Uncovering the radio requires nades, so in pacifist it risks invalidating the run by collateral damage. The bullet-proof vest just makes the game easier. I may add non-itemless versions of these categories in the future. I want to avoid adding a category before someone wants to put a time in it.

I feel kind of silly being the only person in a bunch of these categories, but smitty said he would put times up for some of them, and hopefully the subcategories make the game more approachable to new runners. It's been awesome having somebody else playing the game; thanks smitty!! Exploring this game continues to be a very rewarding experience.

Edit May 9: I removed the "4th mission" category because it's too awkward. It didn't really bridge the gap between "1st mission" and "all mission" that well, anyway. I think better would be "2nd+3rd missions" but that's just as awkward. If the level select cheat worked without a gameover, it would be a different story.