Fiery floor-hopper Hot Lava erupts out of open beta
Flammable footsies
Tidy up the furniture, pick the throw pillows back up. Hot Lava has left open beta, letting you relive a misspent youth without getting mud all over gran's nice sofa. What's next, then? That's the-floor-is-lava covered, and prop hunt's been filling the hide 'n' seek niche for years. Hit me, games industry. When will you gamify the rest of our childhood? Triple-A tunnel tig, anyone?
It's possible you've been hopping around Hot Lava for a while now. Klei's latest has been simmering in open beta for well over a year, after all.
In case you suffered an awfully joyless childhood, avoiding the ground is the name of the game here. You and a merry band of unfortunately sapient action figures need to hop across a series of playgrounds, grocery stores and living rooms without instantaneously combusting. It's a neat riff on those Garry's Mod deathrun maps, with a lighter take on Mirror's Edge parkour to keep things flowing.
Now, I'm no geologist. But I feel like being that close to molten lava should be enough to turn every player into a plastic puddle, let alone all that pleasantly flammable furniture. There's a lot more to worry about than hot toes, anyway. Grinders and crushers threaten to send your toy-like form straight into the recycling bin.
Did I mention they made a chuffin' GI Joe-ish cartoon for this? Who on the development team has the Mount Vile Gauntlet Trial toy-set these days? Let me know, Klei. My DMs are open.
Last Friday's launch added a new Basement map and brings about a host of performance and control improvements. It sounds like a lovely little speedrunning scene has developed over the last year, with plenty of player-made courses keeping it sprinting. Hot Lava comes packaged with a map editor, though it requires a bit of Unity know-how.
Hot Lava is out now on Steam with a toasty 20% discount at time of writing for £12.39/€13.43/$16.