Spelunky

We're going deeper underground.

"Death is fun", says the developer of Spelunky, a freeware Rogue-like platformer where a mysterious cave network constantly shifts beneath your feet, daring you to dive deeper underground in search of treasure, pushing your luck against spike traps, snakes, and many more ways to find yourself lacking any life.

Each time you fail - and you will fail - your entire story is dug out of the Earth, the levels replaced by something just as familiar, just as challenging, but just not the same. Do you have the persistence to learn from your mistakes and make progress into the dark unknown, or are you destined to die in the mines before your adventure really even begins?

I have a hunch on what my answer to that is, but let's find out for sure.

Fun Times

The full moon is out, but where we're going we'll need another light source entirely, descending into the menu screen of Spelunky, and into the first of it's many procedurally generated maps full of dirt, gold, and ways to die.

Your goal is to make it through these stages unharmed, or at least still alive, hoovering up as much wealth as you can grab on the way around before finding the exit to the level - the entrance to a deeper one.

Your character, a cartoony explorer, can run and jump and grab onto ledges with a fair bit of grace and speed. It'll pay for you to get used to the controls where it's safe to do so, lest your run end to a misplaced jump - fall damage will gladly break your bones should the drop be large enough.

Like the great Indiana Jones, you're armed with a whip to do damage to nearby snakes and bats, and again, you ought to get used to its range and the timing of your attacks to ensure that the huge globs of blood that spurt out into the caves come from your foe and not your own face.

Unlike him, you're also equipped with bombs to blow new paths through the rocks, and grappling hooks to make traversal not only easier but in some cases possible at all.

The beginning of the second level - though to stress the point, all these levels are randomly generated - I came across a weapon shop. Why was there an underground weapon shop? Don't worry about it, just browse the limited selection and don't anger the shop keeper.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much indication of what it is you're buying, nor how much it'll cost until the funds disappear from your balance or you're told you don't have enough. It's an irk that has since been updated and corrected in the HD remake, but we'll get to that.

This freeware version of the original Spelunky clocks in, zipped, at just nine and a half megabytes, so playing it is a doddle, even if it did take a little while for me to start to feel comfortable with my actions. 

Case in point was this situation. On each level, I believe, is an Indiana Jones-looking golden artefact and a damsel in distress (which is delightfully switched to a hunk, a pug dog, or any of the three in the remake, should you feel that the damsel is too stereotypical or something). This damsel was in a tricky spot, for sure, but I felt that I could grab hold of her and carry her through the level without too much difficulty - and you do need to physically carry things through the level like this, should you find anything.

In this case, she wasn't as easy to pick up as I thought, and below her was an awfully long drop and geometry that just didn't work in my favour for getting back up to her. With limited rope, I couldn't waste it, and bombs are easily accidentally flung somewhere you really wouldn't want a bomb going off, removing what may have been your only available block of land to launch a rescue mission from.

No, in this case, she would have to wait. I wouldn't get the reward from rescuing her, gold bars would have to suffice.

With precious few hit points, each action you do ought to be thought out even just a little before you go and do it. I honestly couldn't tell you how I died here, I forget what happened, but the important point is that this was it. That was my run. That was as far as I got (not very) and now it's all the way back to the start for another run through.

Have I learned from my mistakes? Am I better decision-maker now? Can I save the damsel?

The random generator gods were kind on the next run, with both a damsel and an artefact not too far from each other, and the level exit. Dare I go for both? Of course I go for both. I'm an expert now...

Carefully placing a bomb on top of an arrow launcher would make my escape a little safer, though I now realise I could have just used another bomb on the floor and fallen through it instead. Oh well, on to the prize.

God damnit that jumping spider can jump. Spooked the hell out of me, I didn't know it's capabilities. I thought - I hoped - it would just drop from the ceiling for a quick fright, but no, it's hurling itself across the room trying to bite me. Succeeding in biting me, it seems.

Death in Spelunky may not be the most fun, but restarting is quick and the concept is so simple that you can't help but to want to try again, and you're rewarded with moments that stick out from the basic platforming that takes place otherwise. Picking up this artefact caused a giant stone boulder to roll across a section of the level, but I'm too smart to fall to that.

A pit of snakes is no challenge for me either, not when I'm equipped with 7 bombs.

One of them even dropped a pickaxe for me to get my Dig-Dug on, though it is of limited use before breaking. It, along with stones and skulls and other items you find on the floor, can be violently hurled through the air as a ranged weapon, which is satisfying when you get your aim right. Anything you can hold can be thrown. Anything.

Frustrations

In games where death is so instant, it hurts all the more when it happens because of something utterly stupid. The action button - or certainly the action button that I set before playing - is the same as the attack button. You're supposed to press up or down as well as the action button to open chests, and faced with unique items in this shop, I must have been too excited to remember this, or I confused it, or I just forgot to think, and whipped the shopkeeper who then shot me in the face.

That's a lot of money gone, along with items that I have absolutely no idea about. A giant green hand? Is that a baseball glove? What do the glasses do? I wanted to try each and every one of them - anything that's different tends to capture your interest and dare you to pick it up in Spelunky - but my clumsiness got the better of me.

Another run, another level, another new thing I had not seen in Spelunky before. A kissing booth? Why here? What for? I've just enough cash to find out. Which button do I press, though? Do I need to hold up as well? I don't know what to do!

Fffffffuuuuuuuuhhhhdge.

For those of you who want to experience Spelunky as more of a visual treat than it already is, the HD remake released a few years later amps things up considerably. It's actually the first version I played, incorrectly thinking that Spelunky had always looked like this and that it was the HD remake that I didn't own.

The controls are just as simple, though just as tricky to get right. One level saw me needing to carry a torch through it to light my way, which I basically immediately threw into a spike pit and had to rely on fireflies for the rest of the level. Not ideal, but once again, it's a story that is now forever linked with Spelunky.

As is the time where I accidentally sacrificed the damsel in return for a pot of glue that would allow me to stick bombs to walls. How was I to know this thing would instantly sacrifice someone?

Final Word

Death, as ever, was inevitable, and I actually ended my session of Spelunky in a bit of a huff because of it how quickly I was succumbing to it. I wasn't quite getting up to speed with the controls, and silly mistakes would lead to quicker deaths.

I was getting frustrated at my performance, more than anything, but when I was done with it, and a few minutes had passed, I realised that this wasn't the original and that I try to play the original games for this 1001 list where possible, and finding the original Spelunky wasn't difficult, what with it still being freely available online.

I downloaded it, set it up, got going and actually began to enjoy it. It wasn't an annoying experience anymore. It wasn't tedious, it didn't give off a sense of despair. Perhaps I learned from the mistakes I made in the HD remake. Maybe I just liked the even simpler graphics.

Whatever the case was, I turned my experience around to end on a positive note. Sure, I made what amounts to no progress whatsoever, but I was having fun doing it. I need to tweak the controls so that I don't immediately insult shop-keepers, and need to remember to switch between the bomb and the rope so that I don't through a bomb when I want to use a rope (another quality of life improvement the HD remake has), but if that's as problematic as the game will get, I'm ready.

I think I'll play more of the original before swapping over to the HD remake again. Both games play well but can be challenging from the beginning. Once you get a handle of the controls, and how far and fast you move, jump, and throw objects, your time will be much better spent, and your runs through the underground more fruitful.

Here's hoping that time will come for me. I want to see more, for sure, and that I wasn't really fussed at first before finally coming around to that view means Spelunky must have made an impression on me somewhere. Definitely worth giving it a go, and I'd even suggest the blocky original before the remake.

Fun Facts

If the feel and physics seem familiar in their speed and slipperiness, blame Super Mario, the biggest inspiration.

Spelunky, developed Derek Yu, Mossmouth, LLC, first released in 2008.

Version played: Spelunky v1.1, PC, 2008,

Spelunky, PC, 2013.