A whipped Damsel's hop as a throw

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

Cracking the Whip at a Damsel doesn't hurt her: it's meant to make her hop. But the hop comes down as fast as a throw, and the game can't tell the two apart, so she lies stunned on the floor as if the player had thrown her, for a time that has nothing to do with the hit.

The player whips a Damsel. She hops, unhurt, but falls back fast enough to count as thrown, and lies stunned where she lands for what her cry for help had left to count down, rather than a throw's 120 steps. Then she gets up and runs ^[1].

The whip's collision with a Damsel on her feet, unless it's the Machete's, which hurts her instead, only sends her up, and doesn't hurt her:

else if (status != THROWN and (status < EXIT or status == SLAVE or status == KISS) and hit == 0)
{
    yVel = -2;
    hit = 10;
    playSound(global.sndHit);
    playSound(global.sndDamsel);
    if (forSale)
    {
        scrShopkeeperAnger(3);
    }
}

Falling back at 0.6 a step more, she's moving down at 2.2 pixels a step as she reaches the floor, and her step treats any Damsel falling faster than 2 out of the player's hands as thrown:

if (not held and yVel > 2 and status != THROWN)
{
    status = THROWN;
    SS_SetSoundPan(global.sndDamsel, 0);
    playSound(global.sndDamsel);
}

Thrown, she counts as grabbed in the statistics if nothing had knocked her down before ^[2], and lies on the floor until her counter runs out, then runs ^[3]. A throw from the hands sets counter to her stun time ^[4]; the hop doesn't, so it's whatever counter held: the countdown to her next cry for help, up to 200 steps ^{[5] [6]}. The Kissing Parlor's Damsel never counts it down, so hers is the 200 she's made with ^{[7] [8]}.

Crack the whip at any Damsel standing out of water (in water her gravity is a third, and the hop may not come down fast enough). In the Kissing Parlor it angers the Shopkeeper too. The replay of the clip's staged scene, on a custom level, whips a Damsel, who lands as thrown without losing a hit point, is counted as grabbed, and gets up and runs 154 steps later ^[9].

The spelunky.ai port reproduces it exactly: it's in docs/quirks.md's list of the 1.1 source's bugs ^[8], and the oracle's fingerprint of the replay pins her fall and her stun. No option turns it off.