Propeller Rats are small, airborne enemies common in Shovel Knight. They are brown rats with propellers strapped to their backs.
Variants
Regular Propeller Rats
Regular Propeller Rats possess only one hit point and deal half a damage point, they can only slowly hover towards their target. In Shovel of Hope and Specter of Torment they are often positioned in such a manner, so that Shovel Knight or Specter Knight can Shovel Drop/Dash Slash into them to reach far-away places. When defeated, they fall of the screen while dropping a 5 gold worth blue gem.
Scissors Propeller Rats
Scissors Propeller Rat are exclusive to the Xbox One and PC versions of Shovel of Hope, and can only be found in the Battletoads boss fight. They directly try to cut Shovel Knight's ropes during the Wookie Hole segment, when fighting Zitz, or to simply hurt him. These Propeller Rats are also the only enemies, besides the Beetos, that are able to be juggled. Doing so will progressively increase the value of treasure dropped, a reference to the original Battletoads video game, where enemies could be juggled for extra points.
Domino Dropper Propeller Rats
Domino Dropper Propeller Rats are also exclusive to the Xbox One and PC versions of the campaign. They appear in the Turbo Tunnel during the fight with Pimple, and carry small red domino-like walls to drop them at the end of the path Shovel Knight is driving on. The short walls can be difficult to avoid alongside tall walls, Birders, and ramps.
Rat Kings
The Rat Kings[1] is a variant introduced in King of Cards campaign. It's basically a cluster of five Propeller Rats stuck together. As such, it must be hit five times to be fully defeated (one for each rat). Other than that, it's basically the same as a normal Propeller Rat.
Propeller Rat Card
One of the Joustus cards in King of Cards, is a Propeller Rat card which can push other cards up.
Rat King Card
One of the Joustus cards in King of Cards, is a Rat King card which can push other cards up, similarly to the Goldarmor card.
Trivia
- The sprite model of the first three Propeller Rat variants are named "Flying Rat", "Flying Rat scissors" and "Flying Rat Domino Dropper".
- Despite being rats, Propeller Rats are shown to posses a mildly high intelligence, as they are able to use scissors and had been seen attending Creech's bar in Specter of Torment.
- The Rat King variant is a reference to the real life phenomenon of Rat Kings, an occurrence which was fittingly more frequent during the middle-ages.
Gallery
References
- ↑ Twitter post by Yacht Club Games