Spelunky. An amazing platform game

Spelunky is just one of those game that you have to know about and try for yourself. It’s that unique and interesting. It’s an amazing game. Spelunky is a open source platform game developed by ‘Derek Yu, Mossmouth, LLC’, that was originally on the PC in 2008 but moved to consoles in 2012. In the world of spelunky you control a spelunker (character) who discovers a mine which holds great treasure but man secrets and mystical properties. The question is can you survive and come out with riches or die in the many different ways available in this game. This game has so much that we may have to do another post on it.

When you start up on the game you are greeted with a cutscene of the min spelunker character walking towards the entrance of the mines with three changing dialogue texts. Everytime you watch the cutscene the text changes. Pick the character that you want and hop straight in. You find a journal which belongs to Yang who found this place before you and has ventured of to make it to the end and discover the great riches and treasures. Through the journal you learn that there are many strange things about this place. Firstly, deeper in the mines you will come to a lush jungle like area. Secondly, that everytime you die in this place you wake up at the main entrance to this mines. Thirdly that everytime you do die and re-enter, the layout of the mines and every further area changes. It’s never the same. The tutorial does a great job of showing the basics and what you need to know to at least make it somewhere in this game. It introduces you to attacking, avoiding big dangers, using bombs, using ropes, collecting treasure and purchasing items from the shop. This amazing game has a great tutorial. Now you should be ready to play the main part of the game. 

An amazing game needs items right? Thank goodness Spelunky has a lot of them. Permanent items like climbing gloves, compass, spring shoes, Kapala, paste and much more. Not permanent items like bombs, ropes, machete, shotgun and much more all depends on when you choose to use them. Climbing gloves lets you cling to any surface meaning you can climb anything. Compass always show you the direction of the exit to the level. spring shoes let’s you jump higher. Kapala is a special item that will grant you health if enough blood from enemies hit you. Paste turns your bombs into sticky bombs. Bombs are… well… bombs and you use them blow up destructible things like walls, floor and even enemies. Ropes get thrown up allowing you to reach higher places. machete is a weapon that you hold in your hands and does twice the damage of the standard whip. The shotgun is basically real fire power. That allows the take down of many enemies. There are lots more items out there. Some are destructively powerful. There is even a item that can kill any enemy in one hit and it permanently replaces your whip. 

There are naturally four areas in Spelunky: Mines, Jungle, Ice caves and temple. Each area is dangerous and capable of killing you in different ways. All have enemies and traps. Now the mines are first but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, because it isn’t. The enemies here spiders which wait on ceilings and if you pass under, they drop down to attack you. Bats which wait for you to be move to a lower level than them and then fly to attack. Giant spiders which are just a more powerful and dangerous version of regular spiders and more enemies. There are traps like spikes which grant instant death if you land on it. Explosive powder box which is very sensitive. Arrow traps which fire an arrow at whatever crosses it’s line of sight once. The jungle has Tiki men who wield and throw boomerangs at you once you cross their line of sight. Mantraps which grant instant death if you land on top of them. Piranhas which make swimming a bit risky. The unique traps here are tiki trap waits for anything to come near it so that it can stab it. The ice caves has yetis which if you get too close will throw you away. Mammoths which have an icy cold breath that will freeze anything it hits. Yeti king which can roar to cause ice blocks to break and fall down harming things below. UFO which slowly flies around and fires at whatever is directly below them. The unique traps here are mines so don’t step on them. The temple has hawk man who runs and jumps when he sees you. Croc man who teleports when harmed. Mummies who release locusts from his mouth in your direction. The unique traps are crush traps which zoom in your direction upon site to crush you. Ceiling trap is just like indian jones. The ceiling comes down with spikes once triggered. As you can see there are lots of stuff to watch out for. The best part is that We haven’t mentioned everything. Not even half of it.

The game is known for being very difficult. For some people, getting to the end to the end of the game is a rare event. Some haven’t completed it at all. This is sort of what makes Spelunky an amazing game. You just want to keep trying and trying and trying. It doesn’t help that there is a quick restart button to get you right back into the action. The difficulty comes from firstly being forced to know what’s going on around you. You have to decide what you do carefully but also quickly. The other bigger factor that makes this hard is that you are never safe. You can have all the items in the world and still die in one move. You can have 20 health and still get one shotted. Each level is filled with monsters and traps. They don’t go easy on you. You might come to the jungle and have to cross a spike pit layered with spikes at the bottom with monkeys chilling on the vines and a tiki man waiting on the other side with his boomerang ready. The damsel that you go to rescue may be unfortunate enough to spawn in between powder keg boxes so you can’t reach the damsel without them dying. You might get a level where there’s hardly any money at all. What’s even worse is that everything is random all the time. You never get the same levels twice. Never!  Trust us, we have played a lot. So you may get frustrated but it’s the good type of gaming frustration where you want to try again and still have a good time.

What’s even better about the game is that it’s multiplayer so not only can you play with your friends, your friends can get you killed or be the one to save your life. It’s co-op for the main adventure. You would think that having 3 more spelunkers would make things easier but most of the time it makes things harder. You all must share a screen and work together. Your whips and attacks can also hit each other. When playing with Diamondz L45 and N63 Prodigy, X35 Earthwalker got hit by a rock that a team mate threw, which knocked him of the edge and landed straight onto the spikes at the bottom. Was it an accident or a betrayal? If team work isn’t your thing then you can go into death match where it’s a battle to the death. You can start of with bombs or just your whip. Break open crates that drop in to get weapons to help you win. It’s pure mayhem and lots of fun. Trust us on that as well. 

X35 Earthwalker said, “I remember a certain Spelunky player who had the jet packs, paste, spring and shoes and spike shoes, 7 health and a good amount of bombs. He got to the Ice waves and attacked a UFO which then exploded, which sent a mine flying at him which exploded and killed him. I once had all the items you could possibly need: jet pack, climbing gloves, spring and spike shoes, paste, compass, spectacles etc and even was on my way to a special location when I was checking an area to see whether I should go in but a lava ball came out from the tub of lava and knocked me into it and when your’re hit, you are stunned for a while so I couldn’t use the jetpack. I had one salty moment but able to laugh at myself and still have a great time.” This just shows how crazy and unpredictable Spelunky is. An amazing game indeed. We will probably do another post on this game.

Overall this is one game that’s very difficult, constantly changing so it’s new all the time, lots to discover and do in each run so you aren’t done just because you got to the end and multiplayer action makes this game something else. Spelunky is in X35’s top 3 best platform games ever. The developers ‘Derek Yu, Mossmouth, LLC’ did an outstanding job on this game. This game is worth checking out. It doesn’t matter if you have beat this game or not. What does matter though… is that you do the ‘Earth Walk!’