Failure is a pervasive theme in Spelunky, but it isn’t the end of your adventure -- it signals the start of your next story.You -- and up to three local friends, if you please -- have bombs to blow up the world, rope to save you from falls from the start, and that’s all you’ll ever need. Items in shops are there to sell weapons for self defense or replenish stuff you've used, but the skills necessary to succeed are there from your first try.
Yet, for a while, it’s hard not to focus on the failure you’re destined to keep repeating, the progression you won’t make, and the impossible skills you aren’t developing. Walking away from Spelunky won’t make sense in your mind. What would I miss if I left? Why would I quit when I was so close last time? How would I tell somebody another incredible story about hunting treasures?
Your actions aren’t the common denominator when it comes to death. Each cave -- there are four in each themed 2D world -- is randomly generated, but is clearly built with some semblance of creator consciousness. Long drops are as likely to land you in safe water as they are to impale you in a spike pit. Arrow traps just happen to propel you, stunned, into (you guessed it) spikes. Monkeys steal and detonate your bombs. Harmless bones turn into harmful skeletons. Wasps corner you when you slow down on their honey. Snakes spit on that easily agitated shopkeeper. Ghosts drift through walls to chase you. Darkness makes each step a risky guessing game.Spelunky can feel like a complete waste of time. It doesn’t want you to proceed to the next cave, and you can go hours without making an inch of progress. Spelunky’s charming music and colorful art is a ruse -- it will punish the faint of heart and emotionally unstable. Death is permanent, gain is minimal, and you start from scratch every time you play. As such, you'll care when you do something right, when you narrowly avoid death. You'll cherish your fragile little life and appreciate what you earn, without a single concern for in-game unlocks.
This is a 2D platformer for the Dark Souls-obsessed, the kind of player who lives to overcome every challenge regardless of the abuse they’ll endure.You’re likely to spend hours in the mines, Spelunky’s first world, before you ever arrive at the jungle that follows it. As I write this, I’ve dedicated 10 hours to playing Spelunky and I’ve only ever made it to the Temple, its fourth world. I have no idea if I’ll ever finish Spelunky or see everything it has to offer -- but you can bet I'm going to keep trying.Between each world is where you’ll make your only substantive progress: The Tunnel Man needs your help to create shortcuts to worlds at your main menu. He asks for gear or money three separate times before he can build, and you won’t know what he needs ahead of time. This encourages players to go out of their way to soak in Spelunky. Blasting through caves gets you nowhere. Nothing is as empty and unfulfilling in this adventure as ignoring what it has to offer every step of the way.
Somewhere during the journey you realize you’ve gained skills, your perception’s changed, and there’s a science to the way you navigate. It’s no longer about just making it through, but making it through well -- and you are, in some basic sense, pretty good at Spelunky. The world that took you hours to discover and defeat takes two minutes to complete, looted treasure and gear, rescued damsels and all. You stop retrying out of obsessive habit. You keep playing because you know what you need to do.
