Item Bestowal

This page describes a mechanic specific to the Steam rerelease of Chip's Challenge (and anything that emulates it). It may not exist in any other Chip's Challenge game.

Item Bestowal is a glitch in Chip's Challenge 2. This glitch makes it possible, under certain circumstances, for monsters and blocks to obtain items they should not be able to obtain.

Basic glitch

For most items, most actors are not supposed to be able to enter tiles containing them. As such, these actors were never specifically programmed to handle cases in which their destination tile does have such an item. When this happens, the item will be added to the actor's inventory, and the actor will be able to use it (with some exceptions, described later). This can allow actors to swim, move at twice their normal speed, and be nonlethal to players, among other things. This glitch is about various methods of causing these situations and the resulting properties and behavior of the actors.

Force floor method

In this method, also known as item pinning or item nailing, the item must be placed on top of a force floor, and the actor must be on top of the item. Additionally, the actor must be unable to move when the level begins: the force floor must face an acting wall. This causes the game to think the actor is "re-entering" the tile, allowing the actor to pick up the item. Each actor can obtain only one item this way.

If the item is suction boots, the actor can walk off the force floor on the third frame (first movement frame) in any open direction. Otherwise, either the obstruction in front of the force floor must be removed (e.g. a monster walking away (even immediately) or a toggle wall opening), or the force floor must change direction (e.g. an inverter gate to flip the force floor on the second frame, or a random force floor with an appropriate initial setting).

Animation method

In this method, the actor must slide into a tile containing the item while an animation (splash or explosion) occupies that tile. The actor will erase the animation, then "forget" to check the item and enter the tile. If the actor is not sliding, it will erase the animation without entering the tile. Actors can obtain any number of items this way, but like the player, can hold only four tools before dropping the oldest one.

For yellow tanks in particular, a variation of the animation method can also be used in which, instead of erasing an animation, the yellow tank pushes a block.

Effects and exceptions

For the most part, items have the same effects on other actors as they do on the player. This section will focus on the exceptions to this rule.

An item can not be bestowed to an actor if, in normal situations, the actor treats it like floor and does not pick it up. Consequently, red keys can be bestowed only to players and player mirrors, no items can be bestowed to directional blocks, and ice blocks can not be bestowed items directly, though they can be transformed to and from dirt blocks, which can.

The force floor method works even when the actor can pick up the item normally (i.e. this method lets them pick up the item without leaving and re-entering the tile), except for ghosts, as ghosts treat force floors like floor.

Yellow teleports can not be bestowed via the force floor method since they are terrain, but they can be picked up normally by all actors anyway (except ice blocks and directional blocks). Bonus flags can be bestowed, but are counted only when picked up by players; they otherwise have no effect. Computer chips, green chips, and time bonuses and penalties can be bestowed only to players. Attempting to bestow a stopwatch to a player or player mirror using the force floor method will pause the timer on every other frame, causing the timer to tick down half as fast as normal. Attempting to bestow a green bomb will cause the actor to explode.

Any terrain other than railroad tracks that is an acting wall to an actor that can not step on the corresponding item normally will still be an acting wall when the actor has the item. In particular, items will not help such actors enter fire, gravel, dirt, or locks. Note that ice blocks are not part of this group, and can open locks with the appropriate keys. Furthermore, this does not prevent actors with foil from converting walls to steel walls.