I'm glad to see there's a small group of folks in this skill/score range actively trying for the KS! I felt a little bit like a fraud asking about 200k-500k range players since I only had one score in the 300k range, so put together a game today that skipped the 400s all together for a PB of 539k and level 15-6. I had a great 1st man...getting all the way to 12-6, and could have survived that screen too after successfully doing the left jump by Kong's left foot to escape. But I was so shocked and flustered that I actually pulled off that move, having never done it before in game or practice, that I missed a chance to immediately go for the lower hammer when I could have.
The last few days I've been just focusing on barrel levels...simply replaying a 5+ barrel level again and again and again, trying to get my consistency higher. Even though it "feels" like I can pass the level consistently, if I play 100 times in a row while tracking my success, I'm actually only passing the level around 80ish percent of the time. After lots of replays, I'm feeling like I can recognize patterns and trouble spots a bit more now. Maybe today's game shows some progress there, as I had only one dumb barrel death that could have been avoided.
I found an old TG thread where it seemed the thought was that after you break into the 500s a few times, a KS starts becoming a reasonable possibility. I'm hoping for that to be the case...after my first man, my confidence in actually being capable of doing it in the near future is much higher. I like the idea of just trying to hit a score/level vs thinking KS each game, and think there may be a psychological advantage to that approach.
Anyway, good luck to everyone ITT...maybe we can use this thread to update on our progress, share tips, etc.?