After a year in open beta, Hot Lava is almost ready for release. With Oxygen Not Included appearing in July, along with the Early Access launch of Griftlands, I confess I'd forgotten all about Klei's first-person parkour game, despite its abundance of personality. To mark the impending launch, you can watch another brief episode of Global Action Heroes, Klei's homage to cartoons like G.I. Joe.
In Hot Lava, you'll be playing as toys based on the fictional cartoon. Thankfully, they're all poseable action figures with the necessary agility to navigate an obstacle course that's bathed in lava. The game's worlds are all mundane rooms, from a high school gym to a hideous '80s living room, but they've all been turned into deadly molten swimming pools.
Navigating these treacherous museums of nostalgia requires a lot of jumping, swinging and, apparently, surfing. You can play with up to eight friends, too, competing with them for a coveted spot on the leaderboard. Once you've mastered the courses, you might want to check out what other players have created. Hot Lava comes with a Unity level construction kit and already has Steam Workshop support.
The launch update will introduce a basement level, a new progression system that replaces randomised drops, improvements to controls and performance, and more. There are no patch notes yet, however, so we'll have to wait to see the full extent of the jump to 1.0.
Hot Lava is due out on September 19, and Klei says it will continue to update the game with new stuff, tweaks and bug fixes after launch.
