Home
Monsters

Monsters and legends

Some things down there are bigger than you.

Every legend in Mantlenaut grows out of something real in our own world, then gets a lot bigger. Two are in the game today; these are the ones coming next.

In the game now

Two legends are already waiting for you in the alpha.

In the game

Boss · the Hadal Rift

The Kraken

It sleeps at the bottom of the Hadal Rift, two hundred metres under the waves. Wake it and it fights in three phases: grabbing, sweeping, inking the water black and pulling you into a whirlpool. Its eyes are the weak spot.

Real: Giant squid really do live in the deep ocean, with eyes the size of dinner plates.

The Mantle Wurm rearing over an explorer on a beach at night

In the game

Boss · hot sands and ash

The Mantle Wurm

Forty metres of basalt rings and magma seams that swims through the ground under the deserts and ash plains. The rumble grows, then it breaks the surface in an arc, rears up, opens its four-petal maw and strikes. Only what is out of the ground can be hurt.

Real: Real worms tunnel through soil by swallowing it; this one swallows rock.

Rising from the deep

The seas go deeper, and so do the things in them.

A glowing parasite crawling from a dying kraken toward a whale, concept art

Coming

The Kraken's secret

The Rider

The Kraken was never the real boss. A parasite in its head steers it, and when the Kraken dies it crawls out and leaps for a new body: a whale, a shark, or your submarine. Kill it before it finds one.

Real: The tongue-eating louse eats a fish's tongue, then lives in its mouth and works as the tongue.

A walking whale skeleton bound together by pale worms on the dark sea floor, concept art

Coming

Boss · the sea floor

Marrowking

A dead whale's skeleton that walks, with billions of bone-eating worms as its muscles. Smash its bones and the worms rebuild it: find the spine. Any whale that dies in your world can come back as one.

Real: Whale falls feed life on the seabed for decades, including worms that eat bone.

A gigantic glowing jellyfish rising over a reef among thousands of tiny ones, concept art

Coming

Boss · the reefs at night

The Unending

A giant jellyfish that can't die. Beat it and it shrinks back into a baby and hides on the reef among thousands of look-alikes. You have sixty seconds to find the real one, or it comes back younger and faster.

Real: The "immortal jellyfish" turns back into a baby and starts its life again.

A diver swimming up a shaft of light toward the hidden jaws of a giant anglerfish, concept art

Coming

Boss · the deep sea

The Lanternfall

Far down, a shaft of what looks like sunlight: the way up, you think. It is the lure of something the size of a hill, and swimming up to it takes you into its jaws. Put your own light out and it can't find you.

Real: Anglerfish lures glow with light made by bacteria they farm.

The HomemakerDeep in the dark you find your own house, lights on, door open. It has been copying your blocks to make a lure. The house is its body.
GlasswakeA monster made of water, living in water: invisible but for a wobble in the light and the half-eaten fish inside it.
The Snapping ChoirA blind colony of giant shrimp that hunt by sound; every snap sends out a shockwave that smashes blocks. (A real pistol shrimp's snap is nearly as hot as the sun's surface.)
The Brine WardenA lake at the bottom of the sea, with its own beach and waves. Everything that ever fell in is pickled, including wrecks full of loot.
The Long ChoirA glowing spiral net sixty metres long on the deep floor: thousands of cloned bodies, each with one job. Cut it in half and there are two.
MimicIt has read your Codex and wears the shape of any creature you have met, even your pet. Only its tell gives it away: it never blinks.

Under the ground

Dig deep enough and the planet digs back.

A giant armoured worm studded with gold eating through an ore vein in a mine, concept art

Coming

Boss · the deep mines

Goldgut

A giant worm that eats ore. Your gold vein becomes an empty tunnel overnight. Bait a trap with gold, and the melted-down treasure in its stomach is yours.

Real: The "devil worm" was found living 1.3 km down a gold mine.

A leviathan swimming through a sea of molten iron with magnetic light rising from it, concept art

Coming

Boss · the outer core

The Dynamo

It swims in liquid iron, and its swimming makes the planet's magnetic shield. Kill it and compasses spin, radiation storms hit and auroras fill the sky. Maybe calm it instead.

Real: Earth's magnetic field comes from liquid iron moving in its outer core.

AzurithDeep enough, the mantle turns wet. This creature swims through solid rock as if it were sea, turning rock to water and flooding your tunnels.
The RiserIt rides a column of molten rock toward the surface, closer every day. Stop it down there, or it bursts out as a new volcano in your base.
The SwallowedStrange materials that don't belong to your planet: another world crashed in long ago, and something from it still lives.
The RefinerySomething has moved into your machines. It feeds on your power network and grows cables through your base like roots.
The Sealed OnesBreak into a cave sealed for millions of years and meet creatures that have never seen daylight, in air nobody has breathed.

On the surface

Even the land has teeth.

A colossal salt-crusted crab bursting from a flooded salt flat in a storm, concept art

Coming

Boss · the salt flats

The Salt Pan King

Under a dazzling salt flat a crust-backed crab the size of a village waits for rain. The one storm of the year floods the pan, and it wakes to feed.

Real: Dried lakes burst into life after rare rain: brine shrimp eggs can wait decades.

Trees of glowing fungus closing in around a clearing, concept art

Coming

Boss · the forests

The Underwood

The forest is the monster: every tree is a finger of one giant fungus. Chop too much and the trees close in behind you. Its glowing heart is under the roots.

Real: An Oregon honey fungus covers more than 1,600 football pitches, and makes wood glow.

A castle made of linked giant ants walking across moonlit grassland, concept art

Coming

Boss · plains and jungle

The Marching Keep

Every night a castle of millions of linked giant ants walks across the map eating everything. Knock a wall down and more ants rebuild it. Siege it like a castle.

Real: Army ants build nests and bridges out of their own bodies.

A storm beast on a mountain peak struck by lightning bounced off a rod, concept art

Coming

Boss · the mountains

The Stormherd

It herds thunderstorms onto your base. Fight it on a peak in the storm, bouncing its lightning back at it with metal rods.

Real: Lightning rods have guarded buildings since the 1750s.

BrainlessA brainless yellow slime that finds the shortest way through your defences to your food. It solves mazes in minutes, so you keep changing your base.
The Shepherd of SporesA fungus that takes over your animals: they climb to the highest place they can find and burst, raining spores. Burn the spore towers, cure your herd.
FirehawksBirds that carry burning sticks to set forests and bases alight, just like real Australian raptors.
BallwispsGlowing balls that float through walls in storms and burst on metal: ball lightning.
The Quiet LakeNow and then it breathes out an invisible gas that rolls downhill. Your torches going out is the only warning.
LookalikesWeeds that look exactly like your crops, and bite at harvest time.

Beyond the sky

Other planets, other oceans, other hunters.

A whale breaching from a lava ocean as its skin cools to glass, concept art

Coming

Boss · the lava oceans

Glassback

A whale that swims in lava. As it leaps out its skin cools to glass you must smash before it dives, and on sunny days its curved back focuses a burning beam at you.

Real: Lava cools into volcanic glass (obsidian) when it cools fast.

A diamond jellyfish in a gas giant's clouds firing diamonds at a small ship, concept art

Coming

Boss · the gas giant

The Chandelier

A ship fight while you collect fuel: a floating diamond jellyfish catches the diamond rain and fires it at your hull. Bring it down for a fortune in diamonds.

Real: It may really rain diamonds deep inside Neptune and Uranus.

The LidOn an ice moon, the last layer of "ice" under the ocean is a living ceiling. Break through into its mouth and fight upside down.
The BreathlessIt hunts oxygen in a sea of methane. Feed it oxygen, light a spark, and it goes up.
YesterdayA sea of liquid metal records everything: ten seconds later a silver copy of you climbs out and repeats your moves.
ZeroA liquid you can't wall out: it climbs walls and slips through one-block gaps, drawn to heat. Your furnace is bait and weapon.
The TunAn eight-legged water bear the size of a ship that cold, heat, vacuum and radiation can't kill. Hurt it and it dries into an armoured barrel.
The TidyAn alien civilisation that thinks your base is litter. They land, crush your builds into neat grey cubes, and leave proud.

Pictures of the legends still to come are concept art: each one arrives in the game as a milestone of its own, built, animated and tested, and its picture here becomes the real thing. The Kraken and the Mantle Wurm pictures are from the game.

Where they live →Bring friends →