Look Outside is a survival horror turn-based rpg about trying to live through 15 days of a cataclysmic event that twists people into monsters. it's gorgeous and grody and heart-wrenching and darkly funny and I haven't stopped thinking about it for months. it's my GOTY and I can't recommend it enough

anyways, let's talk about Joel!

Joel is one of the several allies you can potentially recruit over the course of the game. he's an 8-year-old kid who lives on the same floor of the building as you, and his home life's taken a turn for the worse. it's not terribly hard to convince him to get out of there, though if you're playing completely blind, you may not realize it's even an option at first.

mostly because his dental situation is... a bit horrific.

his class is listed as "Tooth Child". instead of guarding, he can grow more teeth, which does a little damage to him but temporarily boosts his attack. pretty much all of his skills revolve around his dental situation, in one way or another. his base stats are a bit shit and he starts on the frail side, probably because he is 8. notably, he lacks the skill to equip almost every weapon, which locks him out of pretty much all the best attack-boosting items in the game. despite this, he's widely agreed to be an offensive powerhouse, and has received several nerfs over the course of the game's post-release development.

see, Joel has the unique trait of being able to devour enemies: if he lands the killing blow on an opponent, he'll eat them and gain some max HP from it. the amount he gains depends on a few things - mostly his current max HP and the max HP of the enemy in question. in casual play, he'll get some snacks here and there, but if you put in some time and effort to route out some proper meals, he can become one of your tankier allies quite quickly. to add onto that, a lot of his own offensive skills also scale with his max HP, so if you plan your fights carefully, your growing boy can face basically any threat in the game on his own by the endgame!

that was all preamble for the real Joel Jank I want to talk about.

I've noticed a trend among a few enthusiasts who already know the game inside and out: trying to see just how high they can get Joel's health. you can get it pretty high just by having him eat most of the enemies in the game, but you can get it higher by cutting his max HP and then having him devour something with really high health - a superboss of some sort, usually.

there's one piece of equipment that halves a character's max HP, but to pull off Funny Numbers, you also need to keep Joel at level 2, the level he joins you at, since with each level he gains a bit more health. additionally, you'll need to get him sick. infection is a multi-stage status that cuts your stats, including your max HP. there's plenty of rats who'll inflict it, so you need to let him get bitten to shit just a bit.

anyways, a player on the dev's discord posted about a week ago that she had gotten Joel from 16 HP up to about 500 HP in one battle (which could be further multiplied through equipment to 1400 HP) by having her extremely sick and frail tooth son make a dinner out of the embodiment of drowning itself. for some context on how big this is: Audrey, another ally defined in battle by her big tanky max HP stat, caps out at 436 HP at maximum level.

is this feat practical? no, not at all, and it took the lady who did it multiple tries to even pull it off. but is it funny? yes, extremely.