Looped run

Just before completing a Run you can decide to instead loop it, allowing you to play a newly generated run with stronger Enemies and challenges but also stronger Weapons. You will keep your loadout, current health, upgrades and Companions when starting a looped run. You can loop endlessly with the game becoming harder and harder with every loop.

How-To
To start a looped run you have to reach the end of Level 1-1B. Here you will have to take down your Partner (e.g. using Dynamite) or tell them to guard a position. Then you have to quickly move out of the level the way you would usually complete a run. Instead of a game complete screen you will now see that the game started to generate a new level. A looped run has started.

With Update 1.0.2.0 an alternative way to start a looped run became available. Once you've completed at least one regular run or started a loop you can choose to directly start a new run as a looped run by enabling it in the new run settings menu. However, this will make you start with a regular loadout instead of keeping your upgrades and inventory from a regular run.

Differences
The major difference between a regular and a looped run is the significant boost in difficulty. A looped run is basically a hardcore run. The higher the loop number the harder it is. But even just the first loop is already much harder than a regular run.

There will more enemies. The enemies will be stronger, dealing more damage, shooting more accurate, attacking faster etc. There will also be more traps. Bosses will have more health and sometimes behave differently. Not all enemies will have increased health, but in more advanced loops (Loop 3+) enemies will always start with additional health.

In the first loop there will still be more prisoners to rescue, but the player will only get to choose from two instead of five upgrades.

Some enemies like the regular bear are exclusive to looped runs.

Some weapons, like blood weapons, can only be found in looped runs.

Companions
When starting a loop after a regular run with companions, including your partner, you will have to leave them behind because telling companions to guard a position will prevent them from following you to the next level. Since you can only command all companions at once it seems that there is no way to loop and still keep your companions. However, in reality there actually is a way to achieve that:


 * 1) Because looping also works when the partner is downed instead of guarding a position it is possible to let them guard a position and then take them out using dynamite, or let them be killed by enemies. Afterwards all other companions can be revived if needed and then told to follow. This will allow them to follow the player to the looped run.
 * 2) When playing as Jim companion dogs will always be carried over to a loop even when the dog is guarding a position.