The Bats Have Learned to Fly (Properly)
There's a fine line between "challenging enemy design" and "a bat bumped into you and now you live on the ceiling." This week we walked a few of Hell's residents back across that line.
What's new in Hell
- Nothing shoves you into orbit anymore. Bats, dogs, scarabs and leeches used to dive through you with the force of a runaway mine cart, and occasionally sent a pirate airborne. They still bite and sting exactly as hard as before. They just can't play pinball with you. Hank is disappointed. He liked flying.
- Bats actually fly now. They hover at a steady height over whatever ground is under them, weave toward you in a lazy sine wave, then dive. Previously they spent most of their time fighting gravity, losing, and occasionally clipping through the floor into a dimension of pure regret. Their wings now flap instead of being stuck on frame one, which, it turns out, is how bats work.
- Attack dogs recover from a smack. Hit a dog mid-pounce and it used to freeze in place like a taxidermy exhibit with its teeth still active. Now it shakes it off and goes back to being a menace. Mary is relieved. She was worried.
- Scarabs got a whole new pack brain. They leap onto you and ride you now, one at a time, like a very small, very gold rodeo. Packmates will happily fling each other at your face. The fix for a scarab on your back is the obvious one: hit it. Hit it hard. The Mecha Scarabs in Molly's corner of Hell run the same playbook in heavy armor, so bring something that hurts metal.
- Robo-leeches resurface where the ground actually is. They burrow, track you underground, and pop up next to you rather than inside you, under the map, or halfway up a wall. Walls also stop their lunges now, which is something walls are traditionally known for.
Behind the curtain
Most of this came down to one rule we'd been breaking: an enemy charging through you shouldn't have the mass of a cathedral. Once that was fixed, a whole family of "why did I just teleport?" bugs quietly packed their bags.
That's it for this trip down. If you'd like to be the first back into the pit when Early Access opens, wishlist Hank's Inferno on Steam. Or come tell us on Discord which bug you'll miss most. We won't bring it back. Probably.