Loaches are by far my favorite creature to be introduced in this DLC. It reminds me a lot of Joar's old concept art, which may have to do with their visual similarity to the Rain Deers.
This possible connection and the alpha-inspired rooms make me wonder if Desolate Tract's whole theme was based on reusing old concepts. Even if it's by pure chance, I'll take it contentedly.
Hopefully we might see more new creatures added in future updates, with the slight chance that those drone creatures shown in Iggy's projections will make an appearance. Though it was probably hand-drawn to add to the mystery of the world, like with other projections.
ruffles come eat ur slop
Today's Seal Is: Some Kind Of Wuppy
parasitism
poem by @growrotten
Bodily limitations be damned, my boy can work those hips.
[song is Hafanana by Afric Simone]
its because the hunter is evil
Recently, @iteratorsex and I discovered that Voidspawn behave somewhat differently for the Hunter compared to other slugs. I decided to do some digging to figure out exactly what the differences are, and thought I'd present them here. There are a few different ways you can encounter Voidspawn in Rain World:
First of all, there are a number of rooms in Shaded Citadel where free-swimming Voidspawn spawn naturally. Specifically, they swim towards SH_D02 (the room with Monster Kelp and a karma flower at the bottom of the region) and mill about there. These Voidspawn do not appear at all for the Hunter.
Next, In the caverns beneath the Depths, Voidspawn are seen swimming towards and down into the Void Sea. These Voidspawn behave identically on all slugs, with some slight adjustments due to the state of Subterranean in the Saint's campaign.
Finally, there are the Voidspawn Eggs, small, round objects that can appear at specific locations throughout Shaded Citadel, Subterranean, and Shoreline. These locations are fixed across all campaigns, but for the Hunter, each individual egg only has a 6% (~1/17) chance of actually appearing. This is compared to a 100% chance on all other slugs. When the player touches a Voidspawn Egg, its Voidspawn is released and slowly wanders offscreen.
Normally, the Voidspawn released from eggs make their way out of the room through a designated exit, one chosen by Rain World's developers when they placed that particular Voidspawn Egg. However, for the Hunter all Voidspawn released from eggs are aimless: each one swims offscreen in a different, completely random direction. In the screenshots above, I artificially added many Voidspawn Eggs to a shelter. As you can see, for the Survivor they all swim in generally the same direction, while for the Hunter they each have a different heading, and far fewer Voidspawn spawned overall.
I'm not sure, though it's all clearly very intentional. I can think of two general ways to explain the differences, at least. Either:
There is something special about the Hunter that makes it more difficult for them to see Voidspawn. It could be their disease, or related to whatever prevents them from encountering Karma Flowers.
Voidspawn are simply rarer outside of Subterranean prior to the Hunter's campaign. Perhaps the reactivation of Looks to the Moon drew more Voidspawn to the adjacent regions.
What do you all think? Which sort of explanation do you lean towards? Any ideas why the Hunter's Voidspawn should be so aimless compared to other campaigns?