Bat Out Of Hell uses spatial audio and screen reader announcements to assist visually impaired players. Headphones strongly recommended.
Highlighted terms below are buttons — press them to hear a sample of that sound.
Visual glossary
What each item looks like on the canvas, for sighted helpers.
Your car
Obstacle
Gas can
Wrench
Coin
Shield power-up
Rocket power-up
Horn ball power-up
Horn ball (fired)
Ramp
Sinkhole
Air coin (over ramp)
Press Start Game to begin.
Use Left/Right Arrow Keys to switch between 3 lanes (Left, Middle, Right).
Use Up/Down Arrow Keys to adjust your speed.
Avoid . An obstacle emits a tone that increases in pitch as it approaches, and falls as it passes by. Its position in the stereo field indicates which lane it's in.
Collect (three metallic noise bursts) by being in their lane when they reach you. Fuel burns faster the harder you push the throttle.
Press G to hear your current fuel level.
Press P to hear your current score (points).
Press S to hear your current speed.
Press H to hear your current vehicle health.
Hold Space to honk the horn. Honking accepts a pending race challenge, and fires a projectile when the horn-ball power-up is active.
Collect power-ups (up to three at a time) by being in their lane. Press Shift to activate the most recent one. Only one can be active at a time.
absorbs one obstacle hit with no damage or speed loss. Surviving the whole duration of the power-up at an average speed of 50mph or more grants a points bonus.
Makes you go like a bat out of hell for 20 seconds. You get 5 additional seconds for each gas can you collect while the rocket is active. Try to collect as many coins as you can to get even more points!
Ever wanted to shoot balls out the front of your car with your horn? Now you can! Anything the ball hits gets destroyed and you get points. Chain them together for an even bigger bonus, but be careful of hitting gas cans.
When an active power-up runs out, a sound plays — a descending high-to-low sweep with two voices, the second trailing 1.25× slower than the first.
Gamepad support. A standard controller is fully supported with haptic feedback:
Left stick steers between lanes. Hold it past the threshold to keep moving — lane changes repeat every half second, matching the arrow keys.
Right trigger accelerates, Left trigger decelerates. Both are analog — a half-pulled trigger ramps the throttle at half speed.
A honks the horn — press and hold mirrors the keyboard space bar (also fires the horn-ball projectile when that power-up is active, and accepts a pending race challenge).
Left bumper (LB) is a shift modifier. Hold it and press a face button for the shifted action: LB+A speaks your speed, LB+B speaks your score, LB+X speaks your fuel level, LB+Y speaks your health.
Right bumper (RB) activates the most recent power-up in your queue (same as Shift on the keyboard).
Start / Menu toggles pause.
On the title screen and the game-over screen, the D-pad moves focus between on-screen buttons and A activates the focused one — so Start, Play Again, the instructions toggle, and the statistics toggle are all reachable without leaving the controller.
Rumble channels reinforce the audio cues: obstacles rumble the right side as they approach and pass; sink holes alternate left and right; ramps thump on launch and on landing; horn-ball fires, hits, and gas-can blasts each have their own signature pulse. Power-up pickups have a recognisable three-pulse-right plus long-left-half pattern as they approach.
Options
Verbosity
Choose what the game announces automatically. The keyboard and gamepad status shortcuts (speed, score, fuel, health) always work regardless of these settings.