After playing the unreleased game a lot, there was clearly something missing from ViralMarket compared to other role-playing games. Lack of choice for progression. You might be in a giant store, but there are no upgrades to purchase. Nothing traditional RPG players would recognize, no weapons, no armor, no new skills, and no dialog trees. The choice was relegated to simple paths to get shinny objects and how to traverse around wandering enemies and the combat against said foes.

To aide a player’s natural need to personalize things, with every level-up, the player gets a choice between three random upgrades on top of the typical stat boosts brought with each new level of progression. This is on top of the typical stat growth from increasing a character’s level.

Each choice will boost one of several statistics: Maximum health, maximum mana, attack power, defense, wisdom, agility, luck, and evasion. The first two get a heavier boost since they get to higher numbers. The last two get far less of a boost because they’re 0 – 100.

Each random choice comes with one of five tiers of quality. Common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary. The stats will boost 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 or 1 – 5 depending on the stat the upgrade boosts. The higher the tier, the less of a chance of that quality. To increase the chance for higher qualities, the player can boost the character’s luck stat. Reaching a maximum of luck will ensure the character always gets legendary choices.

These upgrades are optional, at least so far. The player gets a hint after Rudy’s first level-up that upgrades exist, but the player still has to go into the upgrade menu to get the choice. Perhaps there should be an achievement for not using an upgrade.

With a new mechanic, that means new achievements to unlock. There are several more achievements for lucky players who get 5 legendary upgrades in a single play. Creating a highly evasive character will also get an achievement. The rest remain a secret.

On top of all that, the player can still purchase abilities with score points after each game play. That still offers player choice, but it’s outside of the game and kept for each game played.