How does Scoring in Eets: Chowdown work?
Eets: Chowdown introduced a new scoring mechanism where everything you do gives you a certain amount of points. Smack some Ginseng on Eets, get points. Activate a Sneezy Sow, get points. Grab some presents — you get the idea.
There are also 3 ways to multiply your score:
1) Don’t use all the items. The less items you place on the screen, the bigger the multiplier.
2) Grab the “x2″ item. If Eets grabs the “x2″ item on screen available in some levels, your entire score is multiplied by 2.
3) Complete the level in under Par Time. Time is computed by the time between pressing Play and getting the Puzzle Piece. If you complete the puzzle under Par Time, you start getting bonus multipliers. The more you are under Par, the greater the multiplier.
In this way, it becomes a fine balancing act to maximize your score. You must get enough base points by activating stuff in order for your multipliers to matter, but you must also complete the level in the minimal amount of time with the fewest objects and the best path to maximize your multipliers.
With that in mind, I think I can answer some questions:
Why don’t the hints and solutions hurt your score?
At Klei, our one driving design philosophy is that you never punish the player — you reward them for doing great things. Sure, you can pass the game using the solutions, but they are not even close to the top score you can get in each level. We don’t want players to never use solutions and get stuck on a level forever because it causes irreparable damage to their score, but we also wanted to give a way for the top players to continually show their powress.
To sum it up: Players who just want to have fun, and move on when they’re stuck, can and won’t be punished for doing so. Players who want to get the best score can spend forever tweaking their set up to determine the perfect balance of all things Eets. 
I’ve found an infinite loop of points!
Actually, each object in the world can only be activated a limited number of times per play before they stop giving any more points. Also, you might want to be careful with that — loops will increase the time you spend on a level, decreasing your time multiplier — is it worth it? 
Why isn’t there a leaderboard per level?
In Eets: Chowdown, we released 123 levels. That would be 123 leaderboards to update, plus more if we continue to release content packs. Technical difficulties stopped us from doing this 
I hope that answers some questions! Feel free to keep peppering us — we love the feedback.
That all seems a very fair and well thought out system. I now understand why the leaderboards cant be done another way.
Although the score system has caused a cheat on the leaderboards to get an insanely large score…somehow this needs to be fixed.
Comment by ChaZ — April 28, 2007 @ 11:36 am
Damn right there’s good feedback. I haven’t came across a single forum post today where anyone has really said anything bad about the game. I played the trial for about 15 seconds and immediately purchased it. It’s a great combination of, as you say, The Incredible Machine and Lemmings; two classic games.
I’m throroughly enjoying this game and am telling all my friends to buy it, can’t wait to see what you guys do next.
Comment by AndrewMP — April 28, 2007 @ 1:56 pm
Thanks for the kudos, guys!
ChaZ — can you explain in more detail what cheat can be used to skew the leaderboards?
Comment by BigFoot — April 29, 2007 @ 12:10 am
On the Xbox forums they say :
“Score based leaderboards need to be removed. I found an automated infinite loop exploit in a particular level that I can see easily being abused, and after discovering it I can see it being very problematic and easy to set up in other levels as well.”
Also someone replies to that comment with : “I noticed that too! It takes no skill to do that, just boredom and time. It also degrades the leaderboards and you just know that whoever is ranked up top just has the most time on their hands to use a turbo controller and leave it on overnight to gather 5 points at a time from a million chocolate chips falling on them lol”
URL - http://forums.xbox.com/11959071/ShowPost.aspx
Hope that helps BigFoot!
Comment by ChaZ — April 29, 2007 @ 5:02 am
In response to the infinite loop, I’m pretty sure they’re referring to the fact that you can do certain actions over and over to gain points. However, if they actually tried to do it, they’d realize that after a while the actions will stop giving them points.
Also, it’s (almost always) not the best way to get the top score in a level to max out each action, as you miss out on the time multiplier.
Thanks for pointing that out
Comment by BigFoot — April 29, 2007 @ 9:52 am
Hi!
I love Eets’ scoring system!
Why did you choose to have a limiter on the time multiplier? I’m always slightly sad when I figure out how to shave a second or so off only to find that it didn’t boost my score.
Also, I know XBL is capable of a very large number of leaderboards — PGR3 has a leaderboard for every course. I hope you can find a way to support this in your next XBLA title.
What was the appeal of Weekly scoreboards?
-Chris
Comment by Chris Casey — April 30, 2007 @ 5:06 pm
Thank you for the detailed explanation of the scoring system! This game is very well thought out and designed, all I am trying to start up is a way for this game to go above and beyond what it is today. This game already has the “racing” element in it, but there is really no way to compare what time I have on a certain level with a friend of mine or show the world how awesome I am at this level besides taking a screen shot or shooting an IM to them. Chris stated above the number of leaderboards PGR3 has and I know MBU has 60 of them on each individual level. Good luck in the future and thank you for providing the community with a killer app.
Comment by JRONI — May 1, 2007 @ 9:47 am
Yes I agree - the only thing this game is missing is more leaderboards. Both for score and time. Currently the only reason to speed up puzzle time is to get a better multiplier, yet there is no overall time for all the puzzles (would be good to know who the FASTEST Eets player is for the entire game).
I am currently ranked 15 and really want to know how far off the pace I am for some levels so I can focus my extra point scoring on those ones
Comment by Jihad Pony — May 23, 2007 @ 8:52 pm
I’ve heard Nintendo are letting Indie Developers make games for the Virtual Console on the Wii, why don’t you make Eets: Chowdown for that too?
Comment by LFF — June 18, 2007 @ 12:23 pm