Introducing Jupiter Hell update 0.8.8 a.k.a. Gunslinger! A most requested DRL feature is making a comeback - dual wielding of pistols! Apart from that, there's new stuff to find, balance changes and bugfixes, so let's jump right in!

The new Marine and Scout trait allows you to finally relive your Hollywood fantasy and run in guns blazin. With this trait you can dual wield pistols, revolvers and SMGs or any combination thereof. Game-wise this is achieved by having the trait and two consecutive slots with applicable weapons - you pick the first and it wields both! Both guns are shot at the same time, and reloaded at the same time - with a slight penalty. Not to leave Tech in the dust, we moved to him the Headshot trait (which still is very strong!). To celebrate the new trait we're bringing back the fan-favorite DRL challenge - Angel of Marksmanship!.

Balancing healing items has been a pain for us, until we reminded ourselves of a feature that should have been there from the start - health orbs! These are powerups that you pickup automatically when you walk over them. But fear not that you need to avoid them not to waste health points - they overheal with no penalty, so there's no reason not to pick them up on sight! Contrary to their original implementation health over 100% doesn't decay, but is reset back to max at level exit. Thanks to that we've been able to balance health drops better and it will be easier to balance health in the future as well!

There's new loot to be found, rare mods. Contrary to regular mods, these do not increase statistics, but bestow known ADV traits on any weapon (ADV and Exotics not excluded!) you wish that has a mod slot left. There are five of those available now, Frenzy, Loader, Vampiric, EMP and Cold - we tried to pick those trats that will make finding one of them always useful. More may come in the future. With a bit of luck you can now build some really overpowered shit :P

The three most boring level generator layouts in Callisto have been improved, and all Callisto generators were fixed to drop the requested amount of loot boxes and support vaults if present. In general especially on easier levels there should be more items found in the early game.

Apart from balancing pistol traits due to dual wield being available, we gave a general range buff to ALL shotguns. They should feel a bit better now, without giving too much buff to those pesky sergeants. We also made a significant balance pass on late game enemy presence and a bit on stats - in general the amount of armored ravagers has been reduced, and CRI bots nerfed a little (they now come in two equally common variants, the other has a plasma rifle-like weapon). We're keeping a close eye on later game balance and will probably do more changes there next update!

Long requested UI/UX enhancement - there's a new panel (shortcut "v" on keyboard or switch panels from inventory) with the list of all available traits - colorized and browsable with info what is already picked. Additionally you can also look up class information if you didn't pay attention on the class choice screen :)

And finally for the masochistic among you is a Challenge of the ridiculous sort (hey, people DID beat Angel of New York Reload!), which is a variation on the Angel of Pacifism theme - each kill drains your maximum health! You get some extra experience each level to offset it a bit though - good luck, you're gonna need it!

And finally the regular batch of fixes is in, those that weren't serious enough to be hotfixed - list in the changelog.


Next version (0.8.9) will come out within the next few weeks. Originally we planned to do Melee next, but quite possibly we'll do a content release before that, with more generator improvements, special level improvements, overhauls and additions, a new enemy and more new stuff in general - stay tuned!

Introducing Jupiter Hell update 0.8.7 a.k.a. Hellhack! To celerbrate the new update we're putting the game on a -20% discount for a week - perfect moment for you if you'd like to help us promote the game :). There's a lot to go through, so lets jump right into it!

Annoyed by drones getting in your way? Tired of those turrets chipping away your health? The big bad security bot giving you nightmares? Time to turn the tables!

You can hack any mechanical enemy by bumping into him. This brings up a hacking menu, where if you have enough multitools (which replaced repair kits) you can either disable the enemy (cheap) or hack it to convert it to your side (expensive). Scouts and Technicians have access to the Hacking trait which dramatically reduces the cost of bot disabling and hacking. Finally technician only has access to an Active trait that can perform a hack remotely!

Both a successful disable and hack gives you the enemies experience (hack twice as much!) and the items he had. The hacked enemies continue their previous wandering - later we'll probably introduce a way to make them follow you or even take more direct control :).

Terminals now appear not only on levels that have a vault. The reveal map option has been boosted, and marks stations and loot boxes on the level. A new option allows you to download tracking data, permanently revealing the enemies on the minimap. Finally through a terminal you can remotely mass disable/hack the turrets on a given level!

Dismantling is no longer reserved to the Technician, anyone can perfectly dismantle a modded weapon as a new option in tech stations. Additionally you can extract the new multitools from them.

As an option for the utility slot you can find a Backpack raising your inventory space. So does (although to a lesser degree) a new perk for armors!

Each class gets its own scouting trait - which reveals more info on the minimap. The Technician has one to sense terminals and stations, the Scout has one to sense loot chests, and the Marine gets Bloodhound, allowing it to regain minimap info on enemies he already saw (useful for baiting!).

We've done quite a bit of minor UI improvements (full list in the changelog). Most notably you can ESC-exit out of most in-game menus now, and items created are put directly into your inventory if space is available. You can also reorder your weapons on the Equipment screen!

Not to leave the trusty Marine underpowered due to all those hacking changes, we've given him Ironman back, and moved to him the Field Medic perk!

We've done a significant balance pass that should make EASY and MEDIUM difficulties easier. We've also buffed SMG's and pistols and made cells stack up to 100. Ammo found in boxes is in larger stacks, and gray lootboxes drop more stuff!

There haven't been many bugs introduced in the last update but we still nailed a few :)



Next version should drop at the end of the month (or beginning of the next), and will either be about Melee or Dualgunning :). We want to wrap those two up, so before February ends we can finally implement a long awaited feature - Master Traits! If need be, hotfixes will be deployed within the next days. See you next version, and help us spread the word :)

Last release of the year brings you class-specific resources, new traits, a mod capacity system, a new challenge and more!

Each class has now it's own resource - Fury for Marines, Energy for Scouts and Power for Techs. Using a class skill now isn't limited to one use per level, but controlled by usage of this resource. Each class has a different way to replenish that resource - Marine needs kills, Scout opening chests and Tech gathers power dropped by mechanical and semi-mechanical enemies. The cost of class skill usage is lower than the capacity of the resource and you can invest traits in increasing capacity too - possibly having two skill uses back to back! The system will be expanded with additional resource use possibilities and balancing in further updates, so stay tuned!

Speaking of traits, apart from the new resource traits we also removed the overpowered Son of a Bitch, and substituted it with a more proactive trait - Sustained Fire for Marine/Tech and Pinpoint for Scouts - check them out!

Moding has also gone some changes - now mod capacity is an item trait instead of being controlled by Whizkid. This allows us to balance the capacity by weapon - most of them have capacity of what you'd have at old Whizkid 2, but some have higher capacity. Also ADV weapons may now come with more mod slots! Closing out this change, you might also enjoy the new Tech active skill - Dismantle, that allows you to destroy an item and get one random mod it had back (or more if you're Skilled enough!).

To make early game a bit more varied we also added two layouts for Callisto 1. For veterans we added Angel of New York Reload - despite ridiculous rules we checked it's beatable on Easy, no idea if it's beatable on higher levels - if you do, please tell us!


The real work that went into this release however is as yet not apparent. We fully rewrote the animation and ragdoll system in preparation for much anticipated future features - Melee and Dualgunner. These two are also essential to bring you the most anticipated feature - Master Traits. Nuff to say that in upcoming updates things will get interesting :). That said, the immedately next update might be more a love letter to the Technician, stay tuned!

Next version should appear somewhere in the middle of January.

Finally, from us at ChaosForge we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (full of great Jupiter Hell updates :P)!

Hello everyone!

Steam Awards 2019 are up, and we noticed some people telling us they nominated Jupiter Hell for "The Best Game You Suck At" category! We're pretty happy, as we think this category isn't too crowded :P. If you could also nominate us (even if YOU DON'T suck at it), or in any other category, we would be extremely grateful!

Also, the game is -20% off for the Autumn Sale, so it's a great moment to remind your friends and your communities about it!

Post-update bugfix patch is live! While previously we put the notes into the main announcement, here we post it as a small update, as it contains significant balance changes. We're aware of the easier difficulties being too hard at the moment, and this patch tries to alleviate the difficulty a bit before we address it more thoroughly in the next patch. For that however, we'd love you to help us out! A topic discussing it has been posted to the Steam forums:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/811320/discussions/0/2803982773101542252/

Now for the changes:

The biggest one is on Easy - we made enemy cover half as effective as player cover. In short, an enemy behind full wall cover will now be hitable at around 50%. This might seem like shotgun surgery, however it comes from observation that new players don't seem to play well around enemy cover in the beginning. Also, this change makes Callisto easier, but difficulty later game is less affected as enemies don't rely on cover that much anymore.

Next, on all difficulty levels the level 1 medical box will contain two medkits - on Easy and Medium the level 2 medical box will have the same. There are many deaths that are barely avoidable due to not having much options in the inventory - this will allow to get to that point on a more regular basis. To offset the medkit addition on Hard+ and to change the difficulty curve in the direction we want we also reworked the health drops from exalted enemies - don't count on hoarding those on UV anymore, but you'll meet them more consistently on easier difficulties.

As far as usual bugfixes go, we fixed rockets flying through walls (especially on AoDoom), fixed the possibility of targeting the environment in the latter (and nerfed the damage bonus by half), and most importantly a small issue that prevented the OpenGL version working on non-Vulkan cards. If you have a card that ran JH last update with OpenGL only and stopped - this probably will fix your issue.

Full changelog follows:
See you next update, and be sure to check out the difficuly topic above!

Here we are again, a bit late due to conferences and cats, but Hounds of Hell are live!

As the name implies one of the major additions is kerberos - a huge hound-like late game enemy. Don't be deceived - it comes in many variants, and only the basic one is a melee enemy! Apart from elemental versions it also comes with an enrage ability - if you kill it, kill it fast!

The second part of this versions name implies a tileset remaster of the Beyond levels - aside from the regular lava/rocks we rock a new basalt-themed visual tileset, especially for beyond. To celebrate, we gave the Summoner boss-fight a significant revamp :).

While not in the name itself, the third change might be the most significant - and definitely the most fun! We significantly expanded on the weapon perks feature from the previous update, added several new perks and added perks for armor too - among them of special interest are the class perks - which give boosts to your class skills, or an extra charge to your once-per-level ability! Due to the bigger pool every ADV weapon now comes with at least one perk! Moreover, energy weapons (pistols, rifles and shotguns) have their ADV versions added. To not let exotic weapons fall too much behind, we've added a perk to most of them too!

Speaking of ADV weapons, we modified the item drop system - item level is now independent of difficulty (and less dependent on where it drops) - however a seperate mechanic controls the drop "tier". Special boxes (magenta) are now tiered - regular ones are Tier 1, vault and exalted drops are now Tier 2, and special levels can have one or more Tier 3 drops. These control mostly the quality of ADV weapons - Tier 3 weapons and armor will have 2 perks guaranteed!

Regarding armor it now has a negative dodge modifier - the heavier the armor, the bigger the penalty. Do not worry too much though, as base dodge was increased to compensate, and armor has been made significantly more durable (a common request).

To top off, two new traits are added Dodgemaster for Scout and Incoming! for Marine and Technician, to help with survivability.

Finally (among a plethora of bugfixes) we added a new challenge - Angel of Doom - let us know what you think about it :).

Full changelog below, we really can't wait for your feedback on this release, be it here, on the forums or on Discord :D

Happy hunting!
Next version (0.8.6) will be out in 2-3 weeks and will feature terminal/technician changes, telegraphed attack improvements, new content, and hopefully the first effects of the animation system upgrades that we're planning for this period. 'Till next!

Time to outsmart hell itself! The major 0.8.4 update is now live and most notably introduces a full overhaul of Jupiter Hell's AI system! Enemies now can hear you, smell you and humanoids know the value of cover!


The AI system has been completely rewritten - humanoids will now take and stay in cover if close, and most of the enemies will react to the noise you and other enemies make! To make things more interesting, fiends and ravagers can now track you by smell - there's nowhere to hide from them! The new AI increases the general difficulty, but makes (especially the early levels) the game more interesting - just standing behind cover and mashing "F" is no longer the best tactic - sometimes you need to retreat to bait the enemies to follow you, and often you'll be ambushed by enemies following you by scent, or interested in the noise you made.

The other big update is the introduction of weapon perks on ADV weapons. Take careful note of them as they might prove much better than regular modded weapons or exotics especially if the perk requirements are met. Perks for example can increase damage based on the type of enemy, your distance to them, whether they are wounded or make reloading of the weapon really fast if its empty, or even automatically reload on move! The perk list will be slowly expanded both in variety as well as adding them to other items in the future!

Two "quality of life" features have been added - an audible click on wait, and highlighting the last enemies on the level on the minimap (doesn't trigger on levels with summons). We also made "swap time" actually work propely, which also changes a lot - we reduced the 200% swap time weapons as this might be a bit much, especially for seasoned players.

Due to the AI changes we made some enemy nerfs - Callisto formers are less accurate, and the UV enemy buff of accuracy has been reduced to +10%. Speaking of UV, we also made it so that there are no "lucky drops" of early late game weapons - to provide for a more consistent early game.

We nerfed P-mods a bit, as they basically reduced endgame to P3-modding a rapid-fire weapon - to offset that, summoner armor has been nerfed and now everyone can single-mod ADV weapons and everyone has two levels of Whizkid. This is subject to change soon, as we'll be doing a full mod overhaul in the near future, so stay tuned!

Due to Game Industry Conference coming next weekend, the next update (0.8.5) will come in around three weeks time, although you can expect a bugfix version or two within the next few days :P

Please tell us what you think of the recent changes, in the comments, on the Forums or on Discord!

Also, we're launching this update with a discount, so if you're a dedicated player it's a great moment to share Jupiter Hell with your communities :)

Thanks for all your support, and see you next update!

A hotfix has been deployed! We noticed that early game is a bit more punishing than we intended to, so we're rolling out a slight buff to early along with bugfixes:
Quick hotfix for the Callisto Anomaly crash and EMP grenades not working on security bots:

One more quick hotfix, as there were some rare crashes during level transition. We took this opportunity to also hotfix level creation/load times, which should be significantly faster, especially on low-end systems. Finally, there's a rare bug with decal edges appearing, most noticable on Radeon cards.
See you next time in 0.9.0 :)

And here we go again with the obligatory post-update bugfix patch :P

Most important thing adressed is the reduction of VRAM usage that was creating some serious issues on low-end graphics card. This might solve some crashes and framerate loss after update (please comment if it helped you). Apart from that some minor gameplay glitches have been fixed.

Stay tuned for the next feature update, and thank you for playing Jupiter Hell :)

It's update time again!

This release has some significant gameplay changes that will shake the meta! The tl;dr: we removed Eagle Eye, added Aim action and new traits, revisited and improved "transition" levels (first and last levels of a moon), improved manual targeting, balanced a shitload of stuff and added plasma ravagers. A more detailed description follows!

We've rewrote the accuracy calculations and decided it's time for a significant changes in this territory. Following our design goal of not having traits just increase numbers, we've removed Eagle Eye. In turn we added a new basic action, Aim, activated by waiting (the same as hunker - you can have both now!). It gives a whopping +50% to accuracy (up to 100% after two waits). But there's more - several new traits have been added instead! Marine got Focused fire (+10% accuracy to every next successive shot if only shooting), Scout got Deadly precision (your Aim bonus is also a bonus to critical chance) and both Scout and Marine got Steady shot (retain the aim bonus after shot). Technician already benefits much from Aim synergy with Hunker, so we gave him a different trait - Tinkerer (+2 charges on stations).

Looking at aim we obviously looked at cover too, now accuracy always helps to avoid cover properly - this fixes a few wierd behaviours too! At the same time we noticed problems with shotgun damage vs cover. Movable cover was taken into account, but wall cover wasnt. We decided to go halfway - cover affects damage, but only half as it affects accuracy of weapons. To offset shotgun stopping power, we increased basic shotgun damage.

Following that we took a look at ranges and noticed that they're not to clear. The minimum range was tweaked so now it's the minimum range at which you have full accuracy, and the max range is the range at which you still have any base accuracy. We tweaked some values to a couple weapons, see CHANGELOG below for details - most notably chaingun has now minimum range 3.

Accuracy also made us take a look at manual targeting. Now the last manual target is remembered unless you move, and as a bonus you can see the health of inanimate objects! I hear rejoicing from blind fire abusers, but hold your horses - aiming at stuff you don't see no longer takes accuracy into account (how can you aim at what you cannot see?) and has the standard -50% to hit penalty against things that are not targeted.

Further on the balance train we also took a look at modding. We decided to reduce the mod capacity increase of Whizkid to +1, but to offset that we decided to allow everybody to mod exotic (magenta) weapons with one mod. The idea is that due to overmodded basic weapons there was no place for exotics or ADVs in the meta unless you were a Technician (who can still multi-mod them).

A small change that might not immediately pop from the list - enemies are now more aggressive, especially in their optimal range. They will more likely shoot instead of moving, especially at the higher difficulties.

We hope that some of the balance changes will introduce more weapon variety viability as well as make mid-late game harder (e.g. we buffed the armor of post-Callisto formers and Summoner). The latter goal is still in the works though (in the meantime play around with plasma ravagers). In general we hope that Scout got a general buff in this release to make him as viable as the other classes - between Deadly precision, Aim and the stealth vs melee improvement.

However, the most immediately visible change is the transition levels! No longer will people ask us how do you take an elevator from Callisto to Europa :P. We took the occasion to add some balancing too - e.g. you have all three energy weapons guarantee to appear on Io early levels.

Finally there are visual improvements with shadows and smoke effects. The former being a side effect of FINALLY fixing the Iris Pro shadow bug!

Full changelog below!


A traditional bugfix release will probably follow. Next update will probably be 0.9.0 (note that the scheme we use moves to 0.10.0 afterwards, so it's NOT 90% ). It will probably be out at the beginning of October!

Thank you, and good luck!