Villagers (Rust Bucket)

This article is about villagers from Rust Bucket. For villagers from other games, please see Villager.

Villagers are friendly NPCs introduced in Rust Bucket.

Villagers
Various villagers in Rust Bucket
Overview
Gender	Varies
Species	Human
Faction	Good
Health	1 hit
Level(s)	Tutorial: Level 4 Endless Mode: 3+ points
Status	Alive, rescued by Rust Bucket
Game(s)	Rust Bucket

Appearance

There are four kinds of villagers: young, adults, elder males and elder females. They all wear green clothes with a gold belt. The young villagers have a stuffy nose, reddish brown hair, and a green and gold top hat. Adult villagers have a reddish brown mustache and hair. Male elders have grey facial hair and are bald. Female elders have gray hair in a bun and green earrings.

Game information

Villagers have to be rescued by the player. They will be followed and attacked by enemies and can be killed by them or by hazards. Villagers have a different walking pattern depending on their types: elders male and female will not move, while adult and young villagers will run away from enemies. They will only move if there is a direct path for an enemy to reach them. If they are strictly separated from all enemies by a wall, the player, or a non-bright area in Endless Mode, they will remain idle. However, if this condition is not met, the villager will try to move away from the closest enemy, regardless of hazards or Rust Bucket's location. This makes their movement hardly predictable and seemingly random when they are near the player and multiple enemies, which can make them difficult to rescue at times. Since they will only run away from the closest enemy, and are oblivious to hazards or the player, they can be very hard to rescue in Endless Mode, and will often die before the player has a chance to get close to them.

They can be rescued by Rust Bucket simply by walking into them (as if the player was attacking them), which will make them escape the level with a parachute, using the same animation as the player does when ending a level. Rescuing villagers in levels is always mandatory as they will carry keys and other objects which are needed to progress further into the level. In Endless Mode however, rescuing a villager will give a coin to the player. Since enemies will follow their nearest target, villagers can be used to distract enemies. Nonetheless, it is possible for the player to distract an enemy from a villager by getting closer to the enemy than the villager in order to save him/her. Much like green knights, the player will be killed if they are cornered between a statue and a villager.

A villager being rescued

Shopkeepers

This section is about shopkeepers from Turnament series. For shopkeepers from other games, please see Shopkeeper.

Shopkeeper
Overview
Species	Unknown
Faction	Good
Level(s)	Level ♥ (Turnament), Endless mode (Rust Bucket)
Status	Alive
Game(s)	Turnament series

Appearance

In Turnament, the shopkeeper appears as a dark figure in purple hooded clothes and with bright orange eyes.

In Rust Bucket, they appear with large reddish-brown hooded robes covering their entire body. Their face is hidden in a very similar way as Rust Bucket and green knights, and they have bright white eyes like them. They also have a round golden ornament on their forehead, possibly tied to their profession.

Game information

Spoiler
In Turnament, the shopkeeper only appears in level ♥, selling blue fireballs for 80 coins. Spending all 80 coins in the game here unlocks the secret level !, as well as the ability to shoot the same blue fireballs as sorcerers.

In Rust Bucket, shopkeepers appear only in Endless Mode inside shops. They will sell three different weapons to the player at various prices. They cannot be directly interacted with like regular villagers, but will jump happily whenever the player purchases a weapon.

The shopkeeper in their shop in Turnament

The shopkeeper in their shop in Rust Bucket

Trivia

• When villagers were announced by Nitrome, they revealed that the parachute rescue method was a reference to the Fulton system from the Metal Gear game series.
  • In the game's levels, Rust Bucket uses the same parachute at the end of each level.
• The appearance of shopkeepers in Rust Bucket, with their brown robes and bright eyes is similar to Jawas from the Star Wars universe. The two creatures also share the similarity of selling utilities.