#kickstarter goals that werent initially reached in the original kickstart

[pikkish]

Jupiter Hell headcanons. Giv.

Headcanons? Plural? HECK YEAH DON'T MIND IF I DO

^^^also putting the cinematic trailer here bc its good and more people should watch it (and then go buy the game and play it for hours and give it a good review)

anyway yes I have lots of headcanons about this game and since I'm basically the only one posting about it here on tumblr there's no one to contradict me on them. also a lot of them parallel and/or contrast with Doom headcanons, since JH is largely inspired by Doom.

For starters, the CRI isn't inherently evil like the UAC. I mean, they definitely have problems, what with the Callisto mines being run primarily by prisoner labor, and the primary funder of the CRI being the us military so their main focus is war weapons, so they're just as twisted as any major government funded war profiteering company, but they're not actively going "hee hoo lets sacrifice our own employees in cult rituals to Hell for ~SCIENCE!~" They just went "Woah whats this funny pentagram thing buried in the heart of Europa? WOAH ITS A PORTAL TO IO!! SICK WE CAN INSTANTANEOUSLY TRAVEL BETWEEN MOONS hey wait there's another one here on Io YOOOOOO IS THIS A SPACE STATION INSIDE JUPITER??? WE SHOULD TOTALLY INVESTIGATE THIS!" And then it turned out it was a portal to Hell and they accidentally started the demonic invasion. Tough luck, guys.

As for the protagonist, JupeGuy, or Mark Taggart, as is his default name for each run, I like to think that for all his flippant, snarky comments throughout the game, he's actually a relatively sane, levelheaded character, especially compared to Doomguy. This is mostly inspired by the fact that, once you get to the Dante Station levels, he stops with all the silly snarky voicelines and gets a lot more serious and solemn in reacting to things, but there are a few other points that work well with the headcanon. He uses cover when fighting, he can actually pick up a medkit and store it in his backpack for later use instead of either using it immediately or leaving it behind, he can modify and repair weapons and armor, he can gather intel on what's ahead and plan which route he wants to take based on that intel, and he doesn't just go charging at the final boss screaming ferally (unless you're playing a melee build.) He's like Doomguy's smarter, more wary cousin!

He 100% did go to The Pit on Europa, and he did pet Rexio, and now he has a funny puppy that's like five feet taller than him and will maul anything that looks at him mean. Let the man have his pet hellhound.

Also speaking of pets, solely because Doomguy has Daisy, I headcanon JupeGuy also likes small, flluffy animals, though he tends more toward birds, specifically budgies. He had a little green budgie with a yellow head named Spinach.

Ok, just one more headcanon, though this one takes a bit of explaining: there's a secret level in JH called Purgatory, and it is... punishing, both to survive, and just to get to.

First, in order to get to it, you very much have to know what you're doing. First, you have to go to a specific branch on Callisto, which is the first moon you're on. If you miss it, you're out of luck. on each floor you have to close a portal within a pretty short time limit, which usually means tanking damage from all the enemies between it and you, and again, this is early-game, so you're relatively low level and don't exactly have the stats to be tanking like that. Then, you have to close two of these portals, minimum, when at maximum, there only are three portals, and sometimes, there are only two to begin with, depending on where the branch entrance is.

So if you manage to do that, you'll be given the "Demonic Attunment" status, which... well! It's entire description is just "Unknown," so it doesn't really give you a whole lot to go on! But, if you can make it to the branch special level and successfully fight off a handful of archreavers- essentially JH's equivalent of Barons of Hell- then so long as you have a high enough rank of Demonic Attunement, you can hit a handful of pillars in the right order (an upside down star, of course) to open the portal to Purgatory, which doesn't sound so difficult in theory, but those pillars are the only cover you get from the archreavers in the entire arena, and if you accidentally bump one out of order while seeking shelter from the archreavers, then you're out of luck, you can't open the portal.

BUT, if you do get everything right, and you go through the portal, congratulations! you have a whole new set of problems to worry about! For one thing, Purgatory is jam packed with late game enemies, and you're still using early game gear, maybe with a few buffs if the loot in the Callisto Anomaly was good. For another, Purgatory is a liminal space, and going up and then right does not take you to the same place as if you go right and then up, so it's very easy to get lost. And the final icing on the cake? You gain the "Catharsis" status, the description for which reads, "You've witnessed the Purgatory. Some wounds will never heal, and you're less motivated to learn from new experiences."

How does that translate to game mechanics? the "less motivated to learn" means you permanently get 20% less experience for killing enemies, so you level a lot slower, and "some wounds never heal" means that every time you go through one of the teleporters to the next room, you permanently lose a few points off your maximum health.

So what's the reward for going to Purgatory aside from the challenge of it, fighting the secret boss battle, and unlocking the second, harder hardest mode? Well, see, Jupiter Hell is a roguelike game, so all of the loot and weapons you get are randomized. But if you know the route- and I do mean really know the route, because again, going right and up is not the same as up then right, and the health loss applies when backtracking, too- you can get your pick of any of the unique weapons in the game, of which, in a non-purgatory run that goes to all three possible special levels, you are normally only guaranteed to get one unique, and a random one that may not work at all with your build. But in Purgatory, if you can survive there and back, you can get any of them that you want.

Now, the unique weapons are great and all, but if you know what you're doing, you can beat the game without one. So what's an even more powerful weapon, or perhaps, a more powerful defense against Hell itself, that which does its utmost to rip all the joy and hope and love out of you? What could possibly let you knowingly stand against and fight Hell itself like that?

Here's where the actual headcanon starts, because my answer is apathy.

Or, the achievement of catharsis.

Knowing that you're going to bleed forever, knowing that your achievements don't actually amount to all that much, knowing that you are going to go to Hell, choosing to go to Hell, and being okay with that. Being at peace with that. Because how can you truly be affected by misery and suffering if you have already made peace with your situation?

So I think that JupeGuy figured out pretty quickly that he was fighting demons and realized he wouldn't be going home, but to Hell instead. I don't know how he knew to get to Purgatory, since, like I said, it isn't readily apparent, but you pretty much need to know what you're doing in order to get there, so it was a conscious decision on his part. He chose to go there, chose to take up the burden of eternal pain, chose to lose the joy of learning new things, the excitement of life, he chose the horrible apathy of catharsis, all so that he could fight Hell itself and stop the invasion.

And I just think that's a terrible, awful, and incredibly interesting concept, of catharsis first being a bad thing, a painful thing, that only by knowingly, willingly choosing to bear that pain forever can one gain some meager benefit.

as a last note, here is the background music for Purgatory. I think it is absolutely terrifying and also sometimes I will listen to it on repeat and think about JupeGuy.

(I had to record this myself by sitting in the level and taking a video then converting that video to mp3, because no one's put the ost up on youtube, I don't know if/where you can officially download it, and apparently JH uses a weird filetype that I could not for the life of me find a tutorial on how to rip the soundfiles for. So idk if that's its actual name or what.)