Damage and stun

Verified against the spelunky.ai port v0.1.10 on 28 October 2026.

Each thing that hurts the player takes its own number of hearts, from 1 for most monsters to 99 for lava. Many also stun him for a time, during which he can't move, and a monster's touch knocks him back and makes him invincible to monsters for a second. A fall hurts too, if it's long enough.

Most monsters' touch is the code they share, their parent object's (oEnemy's). When the player touches one without Stomping it, and isn't invincible, he's knocked away from it at 6 pixels per step, blinks, and is invincible for 30 steps; then, if he has a heart left, he loses one ^[1]. Monsters with a touch of their own take their own amount, usually the same way (Numbers). A few do something else:

• A Yeti, a Hawkman or an angry Shopkeeper grabs the player and throws him over its head, stunned, unless there's a block above it; the first wall or floor he hits takes a heart ^{[2] [3]}. A long fall cancels that heart, as the landing costs one anyway ^[4].
• A Magma Man burns him: he's stunned and set alight as well ^[5].
• A Ghost kills him outright, as does a Mantrap, which eats him ^{[6] [7]}.

While the player is invincible he blinks for as long, the two counts going down one a step ^[8]. Only monsters' touches check it. The checks in his own step for arrows, thrown rocks, lasers, explosions, traps, spikes, lava and falls don't, and neither do a bullet's or a Tomb Lord's fly's, so they hurt him while he blinks ^{[9] [10] [11]}. Nor do those checks space their hits out: an explosion, a Spear Trap or a Smash Trap he stays in hits him on every step ^[12]. Besides a monster's touch, the Ankh's revival makes him invincible, for 60 steps, and so does going through a level's exit, for the rest of the level ^{[13] [14]}.

The clip shows it. A Snake bites the player, and while he blinks he walks through a second Snake without losing a heart. Back among them, he's bitten again, and once more exactly 30 steps later, as his blinking stops ^[15].

While the player is stunned, every key is ignored ^[16]. He lets go of what he holds, which is thrown up out of his hands and, if it's a Bow, fires ^[17]; a whip swing stops and an open Parachute tears away ^[18]. In the air his speed across isn't slowed, and he bounces off walls at half his speed and off ceilings at most of it ^{[19] [20]}.

Most stuns set a count of steps, which only goes down while he lies still, in the stunned pose: the stun ends when it reaches 0 ^{[21] [22]}. So a stun that sends him flying lasts its steps after he stops, and a throw by a Yeti, a Hawkman or a Shopkeeper, which sets no count, lasts until he comes to rest ^[23].

The player's step counts the steps he's been falling, unless he's climbing ^[24]. Landing after more than 16 is a long drop: he's stunned for 60 steps more, bounces up, and loses 1 heart, 2 after more than 32 steps and 10 after more than 48 ^[25]. Landing on a Spring Trap isn't one ^[26], and an open Parachute or Cape keeps the count at 0 ^{[27] [28]}, as does a stomp, which ends the fall in a bounce ^[29].

The clip shows a drop of about twenty blocks. The player lands on his 35th step of falling, loses two of his four hearts and lies stunned for 2 seconds ^[30].

What each thing does to the player, from the code most monsters share to the checks in his own step:

• A Snake's bite takes 1 heart, and touching it again within the second after does nothing ^[15].
• A Bomb at the player's feet takes all 4 of a new game's hearts, and hits him again on each step he's in the explosion ^[51].
• A long drop of 35 steps takes 2 hearts and stuns him for 2 seconds ^[30].

• The deaths table counts some hits that don't kill. The end-of-game statistics' explosion row counts every step of an explosion the player survives, and not the one that kills him; the Spear, Smash and Ceiling Trap rows count every hit ^{[12] [51]}.
• Some monsters' kills aren't counted at all. A Bat, a Zombie and a Dead Fish never set the name the touch tallies by, and the Megamouth's is spelled another way; a Vampire's own touch has no tally, and nor does a blob of magma's, a copy of the Magma Man's ^{[12] [52]}.
• The Yeti King's touch costs nothing in a custom level, though it knocks the player back and its kill is tallied all the same ^{[12] [53]}.
• A Smash Trap throws the player toward it, and a lit one on a dark level never takes the 10 hearts: the player's check doesn't see it ^[12].
• The arrow check takes the nearest arrow, touching him or not, so a spent arrow lying beside him can spare him a fast one ^[12].