Game Modes & Difficulty

Every run of HYPER BULLET starts with two choices: which Tool you'll shoot with, and how hard you want the climb to be. From there you're straight into the neon chaos, racing the clock to outscore the Monolith. This page covers Monolith Mode and its four difficulties, the rule-bending Trials, the paid Endless Mode unlock, the leaderboards you're competing on, and Streamer Mode for going live.

Quick facts

Base mode: Monolith Mode — "Scores set while ascending Monolith."
Difficulties: 4 — Easy, Normal, Hard, Insane (the actual configured set; Expert and Impossible are unused leftover strings, not real difficulties)
Run length: Beat 15 Waves to defeat the Monolith
Lives: Start with 3 hearts (the tutorial shows three) — "Failed? Lose a ❤ and gain +10 secs."
Trials: 10 challenges for each Tool, each with its own twist and its own leaderboard (added in Update 0.9.8, 19 March 2026)
Endless Mode: Paid unlock — keep processing past the Monolith on a separate leaderboard
Leaderboards: Global and Friends, split per Tool × difficulty/Trial, plus Endless
Streaming: Streamer Mode, Twitch read-only chat, LIV mixed-reality capture (all free)

Pistol blasting a target into a shower of points in the cityscape zone The core loop never changes: shoot Targets, watch them burst into points, beat the score before time runs out. Modes and difficulty just change how steep the hill is.

Picking your run

At the Select a Tool screen you choose one of three Tools and lock in a difficulty before you start climbing. The game even nudges you toward a fair challenge — "Your performance suggests [difficulty] as your optimal challenge."

Tool — Pistol, SMG, or Shotgun. The Pistol is free; the SMG and Shotgun are paid unlocks. Each plays completely differently, so see Tools for the full rundown.
Difficulty — Easy, Normal, Hard, or Insane (below). "More difficulty, greater rewards."

This is Monolith Mode — the base mode whose tagline is "Scores set while ascending Monolith." It's the standard 15-Wave climb you'll spend most of your time in, and the boards it feeds are the default Tool × difficulty leaderboards.

Tip: Every Tool + difficulty combination has its own leaderboard. There's no single "best" run — there are dozens of boards to top. Pick a Tool, learn it cold, and grind one board if you want a high rank.

Difficulty levels

You set a base difficulty at the start, and it scales how high the Target score climbs on each Wave. Harder runs demand more points per round — but they also pay out more Coins, which means stronger Mods and a more explosive build. As the tutorial puts it: "Risk... Reward... Process."

There are four difficulties. The numbers below come straight from the game's configured difficulty data (ScoreManager.m_difficulties): the Base Target is the score you must reach on Wave 1, the Super-ramp Wave is where the required score starts climbing steeply, and the Score bonus is the multiplier the difficulty applies (a built-in handicap so easier runs score lower).

Difficulty	Base Target (Wave 1)	Super-ramp starts	Score bonus	Who it's for
Easy	100	Wave 14	×0.8	First-timers, warming up, or learning a new Tool. Gentle scores, room to experiment.
Normal	300	Wave 14	×1.0	The intended baseline — a fair, satisfying climb.
Hard	500	Wave 12	×1.5	Comfortable players chasing bigger scores. Ramps a Wave sooner and pays a 1.5× bonus.
Insane	700	Wave 10	×2.0	The top tier. Ramps earliest (Wave 10) and doubles your score. Mistakes cost hearts fast.

Note on Expert & Impossible: The game's text files contain leftover DIFF_EXPERT and DIFF_IMPOSSIBLE strings, but neither is in the actual difficulty list — the configured set is only Easy, Normal, Hard, and Insane. (Boss Waves apply a score bump of ×1.4 on Easy–Hard and ×1.2 on Insane.)

Fair leaderboards: Because each difficulty carries its own Score bonus (×0.8 → ×2.0), boards stay comparable — picking Easy doesn't hand you an unfair high score.

Tip: Higher difficulty = higher Coin income. If you've outgrown Normal, bumping up a tier often makes your build snowball faster, because you can afford more Mods between rounds. Climb the difficulty ladder as your aim and game knowledge improve.

Remember the safety net that applies on every difficulty: miss a Target score and you "Lose a ❤ and gain +10 secs." You start with 3 hearts (after your first miss the tutorial reads "2 ❤ remain", and "Accept 3 more" — both pointing to a starting three), so a couple of slow rounds won't end you — but on Insane, with its Wave-10 ramp, those hearts vanish quickly.

Trials — Select a Trial

Once you've proven yourself, the Trials open up — a separate set of runs picked from a Select a Trial screen instead of the normal Tool select. As the game introduces them:

"Trials represent new and strange challenges."

Each Trial is a full Monolith run with one or more rules bent out of shape. Trials arrived in Update 0.9.8 (19 March 2026) — the dev notes describe "10 challenges for each Tool to complete and master," and "Each Trial has its own twist that changes the rules of the run, and its own leaderboard!" You can read a Trial's exact conditions on its Trial Hack before you commit — "Trial conditions can be viewed on the Trial Hack."

The Classic entry (internally trialDefault) is the baseline, no-modifier Trial — "The definitive Hyper Bullet experience." The other eleven below are the named modifier Trials, each twisting the rules in a different way. The exact conditions quoted are taken straight from each Trial's in-game description.

Trial	The twist (exact in-game conditions)
Classic	The definitive HYPER BULLET experience — standard rules, no modifiers.
Hypercharge	Gain the Hypercharger Mod, and there are no Coin Mods.
Rainbow Shuffle	Gain 3 Rainbow Mods that are randomized each Wave, plus 1 extra unlockable Mod slot.
Mod Corrupter	Each Wave, one Mod is destroyed and converted into a Socket level. (No Mod is safe.)
Warped	ADD and MULTIPLY Mods have a 50% chance to be Warped — and all Mod prices are warped too.
Curses	You will be Cursed 3 times, and those Curse Waves don't give extra Coins.
Omnicharge	Mods gain 2 levels each Wave, then are destroyed after the max level. Mod prices are adjusted and some Hacks are included.
Volatile Market	Mod prices vary each Wave, and Coin rewards for completing Waves are halved. (Buy low, sell high.)
Socket Chaos	Socket levels are randomized each Wave. They get bigger as you progress up the Monolith.
Token Trouble	Refreshing the Shop requires Tokens — get them by hitting Token Glitches and as Round Rewards.
Time Is Money	No Coins available. Buy Mods with time.
The Omega	"The final test." All Sockets have −1 level and Score targets are 30% higher.

How many do you actually get? The data holds 21 internal Trial permanents — the 11 named modifier Trials above plus 10 unnamed/internal ones. (Classic, trialDefault, is a separate baseline string, not one of those 21 permanents.) Each Tool is assigned its own 10-Trial subset, so the table is the full named pool, not the exact 10 you'll see on any single Tool's Select a Trial screen.

Tip: Clearing Trials at all difficulties is how you earn special Tool Editions — the 0.9.8 notes list 41 Visual cosmetics for each Tool, "Awarded for completing Trials at all difficulties!" See Cosmetics for the full wardrobe.

Endless Mode

Beating the Monolith ends a normal run with a final tally. Endless Mode lets you keep going instead of stopping there — when you destroy the Monolith you'll see a Go Endless option to push deeper. The mode's own tagline: "Enable endless wave processing after the Monolith has been destroyed."

Endless Mode is a paid unlock (it isn't part of the free game). Here's exactly what buying it does, straight from the in-game Unlock Endless Mode screen:

Continue processing after Monoliths are destroyed. Your run doesn't end at the boss — the Waves keep coming.
Allows you to submit scores to the Endless leaderboard. Endless has its own board, separate from the standard Tool/difficulty boards.
Score targets increase quickly after Monolith is destroyed. Past the boss, the points you need ramp up fast — this is a true score-attack survival test.
Supports development of this game.

If you haven't bought it, you'll still see the prompt: "Unlock Endless Mode to post scores to the Endless leaderboard!"

Endless also has its own structure once you're in it: it grants 2 new empty Mod slots, gives you nodes to choose from, and hands out node rewards like Hacks and Sockets — so your build keeps growing well past the boss.

Free vs. paid — what you get:
Free: the full Monolith climb on all four difficulties, the Pistol, leaderboards, Streamer Mode, and Trials. You can experience the entire core game without spending a cent.
Paid: Endless Mode, plus the SMG and Shotgun Tools. The Hyper Value Bundle packages everything together — "Unlock all content once and for all!" — including Endless.

Tip: Endless is where the deepest builds shine. Because score targets rocket upward after the boss, you need a build that scales — heavy MULTIPLY Mods and a high Combo will carry you far further than raw ADD value. Read Scoring & Combos before you go hunting for an Endless high score.

Leaderboards

Post a run and your score lands on the leaderboards. You can view two boards:

Global — everyone playing HYPER BULLET worldwide.
Friends — just the people you know, for friendly bragging rights.

Boards are split per Tool, per difficulty/Trial, and Endless has its own — so there are many ladders to climb. A few things to know:

If you're offline, your scores won't post: "You're currently offline and your scores won't be posted to leaderboards."
Running an old version also blocks score submission: "You don't have the latest version of Hyper Bullet. Scores will not be posted to the leaderboards." Keep the game updated so your runs count.
Boards can be reset for major balance changes: "Leaderboards may be reset for major balance changes." This has already happened — Update 0.9.7 (16 Jan 2026) reset the Endless Mode leaderboards alongside an Endless balance pass. A fresh patch can mean a fresh shot at the top.

Tip: Want a realistic top-10 goal? Pick a single board — say, Pistol on Hard — and commit to it. Specializing in one Tool-and-difficulty combo beats spreading thin across all of them. More leaderboard detail lives on the Scoring & Combos page.

Streamer Mode & going live

Want to share your runs? HYPER BULLET has you covered with Streamer Mode and built-in capture tools, all free.

Streamer Mode — a toggle for content creators that keeps your stream clean and creator-friendly.
Twitch chat — add your Twitch channel in Options ("Enable Twitch Chat"), then "Read your chat by looking at your wrist" mid-run. No need to break flow.
LIV mixed-reality capture — "Record your game, or stream online." Composite yourself into the game with Selfie, First Person, and Cinematic camera angles, plus options like Smoothing. (LIV arrived in Update 1.0.)

For the full setup — connecting Twitch, pairing LIV, and best practices for going live — head to the Streaming page.

Tips

Climb difficulty for income, not bragging rights. Each tier up means more Coins per Wave, so your build snowballs faster — bump up as soon as your aim can keep pace.
Read the Trial Hack first. Every Trial spells out its conditions before you start; know whether you're losing Coin Mods, slots, or Sockets before you commit.
Pick one board and grind it. With separate leaderboards per Tool × difficulty × Trial (plus Endless), specializing beats spreading thin.
Stay online and updated. Offline runs and old versions don't post scores — check both before a record attempt.

Game Modes & Difficulty ​

Picking your run ​

Difficulty levels ​

Trials — Select a Trial ​

Endless Mode ​

Leaderboards ​

Streamer Mode & going live ​

Tips ​

See also ​