The Airship is an unused set of stages of which Jelly The Octopus was to be part of. It was represented on the map by a colorful airship floating above the ground. It seems The Airship was to be a group of bosses that can be fought at different times similar to The King's Leap. Based on the unfinished code of the other bosses (a clam, a crab and a stork), the fights would have heavily feature parrying. This is a gauntlet of bosses for the player to defeat and get coins. This mechanic was replaced with the Run 'n Guns, while the gameplay idea might have eventually become the Mausoleums.
These levels were scrapped due to a lack of resources and time constraints, as there needed to be 20 airship bosses at most to get all 40 coins in the game. Footage of the one of the boss fights was shown at GDC 2015, which can be viewed here.
One of the fights took place on the ship's deck.
Despite almost everyone thinking this fight was playable at E3, it was only playable on certain monitors at GDC.
Strategy[]
- Evade
- Parrying
Battle[]
Jelly idly smiles at the player(s) and proceeds to move around the battlefield. He can only be damaged if his antenna is parried. This causes him to gradually move faster and faster until he takes enough damage and is eventually defeated.
The Clam would damage the player(s) with these attacks:
- A spit attack that was not fully coded.
- An attack that spawns barnacles. The barnacles were programmed to arc down to the ground and start a spinning animation, which could mean it could roll off-screen, bounce like the Bouncin' Beetles or roll for a while and become an obstacle like the Toothy Terrors in Floral Fury. There is a version of the barnacle that can be parried, and it seems to disappear when it hits the ground.
The Crab has at least three known attacks, both of which are unfinished:
- It shoots a gem out at an angle, which bounced around the screen and eventually turned pink after a delay.
- A bubble beam attack which has a sine wave pattern.
- An unspecified barnacle attack not unlike the Clam's. All code referring to this misspell it as "barnicle."
Just like Jelly, the Stork could only be damaged by parrying a certain part of its body as it bows. It is unclear as to where you had to parry it, as the name provided, the "knob", is ambiguous. It has two known attacks:
- Spawning babies that jump onto the player(s) and attack them.
- A "spiral shot" which had parryable projectiles that were aimed directly at the player(s)
Soundtrack[]
| Version | Soundtrack |
| Original soundtrack |  |
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Despite being listed as a level in the debug level select menu as "Airship_Jelly" and "Airship_Stork", all the files have been removed, and clicking on them will softlock the game.
- A similarly themed Run 'n Gun level, Perilous Piers, was possibly inspired by concepts explored in these fights as the known Airship bosses are all animals living on or near the coast.
- This level replaced Aviary Action at GDC.
- The music for these stages was used for the initial teaser trailer of The Delicious Last Course. This lead some to believe the airship would return in the DLC. Although this did not happen, a spiritual successor of sorts, The King's Leap, was included.
- Most of the champions in The King's Leap reused codes from this fight, and can been seen as the spiritual successor of it.
- The Pawns likely reused codes from the baby birds for the Stork.
- The Knight is similar to Jelly The Octopus.
- One of the unused Bishop fight requires the player to hit some "birdie" back at him.
- The Rook reused some of the codes from the Crab and the Stork, most likely projectiles bouncing and being reflected back at them.
- In an unused animation reel, a fifth Airship character was revealed, being some type of captain. Instead of being a boss, he would be an NPC, giving coins after the player defeat one boss. It’s presumed he could also be like the King of Games. It’s not known if the captain ever was coded.
- In The Art of Cuphead, a pelican character can be seen, who may be the Stork. Similarities can be noted, such as a fish in it’s mouth that is possibly the babies the Stork uses to attack, and being very clearly a boss. However, it is not confirmed if this pelican character is the Stork boss.
- There are rumors that the knockout animation for The Crab was the Crab staring at his claw, noticeably in pain, and The Stork having her knockout animation have her babies gnaw at her. These are not confirmed, however.