When light first shone from the sun, fate gave you three choices...

In actuality of course it was me, us from from the Cool Smithy Games gang, that give you three choices upon both completion of lap and level up. Your choice in growing more powerful happen in those two instances in the prior sentence, but let us start with the classic level up. 

Level ups are simple--achieved by gaining enough experience points, but with the minor twist that experience points are physics objects and will slide around, sometimes forever lost in a pit of acid. Whenever you do gain enough experience points the following screen will show up:

As you can see you will have three choices to ponder between. The main goal is to give you twofold options, where you might want to focus on the secondary or the combination rather than the ability itself.
For example here you would be hard pressed to take Air Looper I due to the secondary of heal while you are at full hp. On the other hand maybe you don't want to level up the ability you already have unlocked in Clockwork Axe, but are interested in the heal. The tertiary option does speak to you with already established choice of crit chance earlier.

With these and multitude of other reasons to choose one over the other every level up will be an interesting choice to make, to increase your chance of survival. 

Part 2 - The Lappening

 Technically the order these happened in were the other way around, where the lap completion occurred earlier in history but for simplicity(or my whims) they appear in this order.

The image above is reached through the simple means of running far enough to reach the end of your lap. For those not already in the know in Clockwork Survivors you lap around the same level 6 times before you have filled the balloon with enough steam to get to the next level. For each completed such lap you gain a reward. 

As some who are keen eyed may have noticed the color on the above ribbons are yellow instead of green, while the bottom ones are a bronze-orange shade--the same as before. This is to signify the different drop pools they show up from. Abilities are green and only gained through level ups(and chests, but those are not the focus of this article), while "Items" are golden-yellow and have duplicates from the secondary pool inside of them. 
The Critical Damage 1 could have just as well appeared int he bottom row, giving you a Spike Shield 1 + Critical Damage 1 card to choose from. 

In conclusion Clockwork Survivors have two different but same pathways to gain power through. Your abilities grow significantly during level up, but you will gain more Lap Completions than level ups to begin with so most of your early power might come from increased critical chance rather than several abilities.  

I welcome you to check out Clockwork Survivors on steam as well, where there is as of this post a playtest available. 

- Vlue
Cool Smithy Games