When playing a platformer, do you ever find yourself throwing caution to the wind and start racing through it masterfully like an unstoppable daredevil?
That feeling and playstyle are what I really wanted to tap into when I first started making games. Before Miles & Kilo, I created a game called Kid Tripp for mobile devices; my pitch for it was simply “an old-school, speedrunner-friendly platformer where you never stop running.” I spent a few years making it in my free time after school, and eventually released it in 2013. Fortunately, it was super well-received (much better than I was hoping for!), so I immediately got to work on a bigger and better sequel.
The first game starred a character named Miles Tripp. His original move-set was simple: he could jump, sprint, and throw rocks. For the sequel, one of my main goals was to introduce a bunch of fun new abilities so I’d be able to design more varied and exciting levels.
Early in development, the idea was to create a large cast of new characters and give each of them a unique ability (for example, one character could slide, another could wall-jump, and so on); but as development progressed I decided to combine all those different moves into my favorite two characters: Miles, the title character from the first game, and his mischievous dog, Kilo. This resulted in two characters with very different movesets that feel really exciting and fluid to play.
The core gameplay loop in Miles & Kilo is simple: You’ll run through a level (sometimes playing as Miles, other times as Kilo), learning the different patterns of traps and enemies until you eventually reach the goal. Levels are designed to be short (usually around 25-30 seconds when perfected), though many of the later, more difficult levels will require dozens of attempts to master. Once you complete the game, you’re encouraged to go back and run through the game again in the Time Attack mode, where your overall time, number of deaths, and score will be uploaded to the game’s leaderboards.
For completionists, we’ve also included a sizable list of achievements to tackle, as well as a grading system to measure your mastery of each of the game’s levels.
Four Horses Ltd. and I are super excited about bringing Miles & Kilo to you now on Xbox One and Windows 10. The game is quite a challenge, so we’d like to wish you good luck, and we look forward to seeing you on the leaderboards!
P.S. Keep an eye out for Miles & Kilo’s predecessor, Kid Tripp, launching on Microsoft platforms later this year!
Miles & Kilo is available now on the Microsoft Store for Xbox One and Windows 10 as an Xbox Play Anywhere title. Click here for more details.