I'm just shy of 4 hours into it (and hopefully not speaking too soon) but I'm already head over heels for this game. I can't believe it took me this long to play it for the first time, yet I'm glad it did; it wouldn't have nearly the same impact if things were any different.

I've burnt myself out on many roguelites and their offshoots over the years. I've always wanted to find the right one that favors skill development over meta-progression to overcome harsh challenges. I also tend to prefer action over turn-based combat so I haven't been able to get into a traditional roguelike yet. what I'd need is a game that can meet in the middle. enter Spelunky - it has the mentality of dying a lot to learn the game. not in the modern "roguelite" sense either where you'll die a bit and suddenly make huge strides of progress because lol permanent upgrades, so learning the game's quirks actually feels rewarding and worthwhile. trial and error is the name of the game here which may be a bother and a false indicator of difficulty to some people, but I liked it and found that the randomness kept it fresh. I have a tendency to be overaggressive in games, and Spelunky taught me not to rush it and force my way through. it's notoriously brutal and funny with just how many random ways you can die. one time I baited an arrow trap into hitting an explosive tile just for the arrow to bounce off and kill me anyways. or the several times I've seen a caveman charge into instant death and said "haha dumbass" to myself just for me to do the exact same not even ten seconds later. I love when a game can have me laughing at my own mistakes and eventual death... or deaths rather, tons of them. it gets frustrating but that frustration is good and I never find myself blaming the game for anything. it's quick and painless, in fact dying just motivates me to continue further. everything about the mechanics seems to be very well designed, it just comes down to utilizing my own skills and knowledge to do better in the situations it throws at me.

easily one of the greatest roguelikes I've ever played, and could very well be my new favorite. I'm really eager to get into Spelunky 2 after fully completing this but uh.. I have a feeling that's not gonna happen any time soon...

ETA: I did "beat" the game but won't mark it as completed since I didn't get the true ending, the path to get there seems convoluted anyways. I don't hold that against it and I still love it, it's just that my biggest holdup with these kinds of games is how I get too sucked into them to play anything else. I like to focus on one thing at a time and these kinds of games are at their strongest when played in moderation, like a side game or in phases. I don't want the repetition to wear me down and warp my perception of it so I'm happy to take a step back from it.

A fun little adventure game with rogue-like elements with the perma death and having to start all the way from the beginning in each and every area, however I never got too far to that and the person to rescue is quite hilarious with it being either a woman, a man in a thong or a dog.

I personally didn't like the game that much, but it is well made and fun whilst it lasted.


Edit: This is one of those games where it's VERY easy to mess yourself up! You can end up destroying too many blocks that there is no way to return back and due to my own issues with focus I lost interest in this game far too quickly, but that doesn't make it a bad game. It's more of a ME problem and less of the game, which in all honesty, is fairly repetitive.

First game beat of 2024! The early-2010s was a booming point for indie games with digital distribution allowing for more games to get wider attention than ever before. Of those games, Spelunky was seemingly one of the more popular ones, having an enduring fanbase that persists to this day and seeing great success on Xbox Live Arcade. Having not played Spelunky until well after its sequel launched, I'm certainly a bit late to the party, and while I might not be as fond of the game as others I will say that I enjoyed it quite a decent amount.

Spelunky is a platformer that takes oodles of inspiration from roguelike games, and while rougelites currently flood the market I have to say Spelunky still stands out amongst them as particularly unique. Unlike a lot of these games where the rougelite elements feel entirely unnecessary and tacked on, they're core to how Spelunky plays and each element feels properly playtested and satisfying. This is not a fast-paced platformer at all, but rather one that must be taken slowly and methodically or you will die. You will die a lot, and this is a lesson you must learn quickly or you will see little success. Using your many tools, such as bombs and ropes, as well as what you can acquire from the shopkeepers, strategically is a lot of fun. The levels are, for the most part, randomly generated and the algorithm they made to do so is remarkably consistent. You're not going to go from a perfectly challenging level to baby's first Super Mario Maker level and while there are variations in quality, they're not very drastic at all. Each area has a distinct gameplay theme with fun enemies and the escalation of challenge always felt appropriate. I think the ice caves might personally be my favorite due to how quickly one could get through them, but the temple is probably the best due to combining all of the game's best aspects into one. I understand why this game has bitten many people like crack cocaine even if it didn't quite get me the same way. Coming from someone who can beat the original Mega Man in less than an hour, a game often considered the peak of Nintendo Hard, Spelunky heavily frustrated me. Part of this is not a flaw of the game, as it was just growing pains of me learning the game's systems and mechanics, but sometimes Spelunky can be legitimately annoying in a way that is detrimental to its quality and unfortunately when you die and start over so much, "sometimes" is relatively quite frequently. While I do think the stage generation is finely tuned, there are occasions where things that just aren't remotely fair occur. This is mercifully not nearly as common as a lesser game would have it, but it occurs enough of the time to be at least a little annoying. It is still ultimately successful from a gameplay standpoint.

Spelunky's presentation is charming, with super-deformed, squished characters exploring painterly environments. The Indiana Jones-inspired character designs and old timey aesthetic look original and adorable, and I appreciate just how many characters one can unlock by playing through the game. There's really something for everyone there. Once again, the procedural stage generation meshes art assets very well. It always at least looks handcrafted and the team at Mossmouth did a good job making sure all of the game's art would look good when mished and mashed with one another. Again, it feels like a digital painting and not just two-dimensional tiles slammed together. The game's lighting, shadow, and reflection effects add a layer of depth and dimensionality to the presentation, making the visuals pop more than they would otherwise. The only negative I can think of is that the game's assets were very clearly made for 7th-gen 720p displays, which look fairly blurry at higher resolutions, but this is more of a sign of the times than any real fault of the game. Combine this with a score from Eirik Suhrke that replicates the sounds of the Yamaha YM2612 quite well while also sounding fairly distinct in its own right. Each track matches the atmosphere of its environments well and there's a lot of variety so the same tracks don't get too annoying. The jazz inspired elements, such as the saxophone solo on Yeti Caves add color and musical vibrancy to the score.

Spelunky is a game that many people consider to be hard drugs. Considering the randomly generated elements alongside a solid gameplay loop and charming presentation, I see why many people have latched onto this the way they did. Personally, I didn't ever get to that point, but I at least beat Olmec with relative ease by the end of my many hours with the game. There's a lot of Spelunky that I didn't get a chance to access, like the game's many secret areas, and the full fledged multiplayer mode, so perhaps my opinion would have improved had I experienced those. Nonetheless, the game is certainly very good despite some rough spots and I don't doubt I'd click even more with the sequel.

Wrote this review a little over 3 years ago on Steam, after just getting the true ending of the game. Reposting it on here because this is where all my reviews are.

You start the game, you die, repeat, but this time the layout's different. This can be said for a lot of roguelikes, and I am no stranger to them. I've played my fair share of games from this particular genre, and to note, the games are Dead Cells, Noita, Downwell, Enter the Gungeon, and many others.

Now, they're all great games on their own merit, but personally, the moment I first decided to try out Spelunky on my PSVita a few months ago, I was surprised by how simple, and straight to the point the premise was, especially compared to the roguelikes I just mentioned. I've heard many praises for this game over the years, knew very little about it, and only realized just recently how long ago this game came out, August 8th, 2013. It's considered among many as a roguelike classic, and possibly one of THE hardest games ever. So let me tell you why I thought it was so good, that I had to finish it on PC.

So, did I love it? ABSOLUTELY! I only sunk about two hours into it my first time through, and pretty much felt how difficult this game was going to be immediately after the tutorial. The tutorial in a way pretty much serves to tell you what you're capable of, merely showing you the basics like the controls, and the logistics that go into how you use your items. The game presents itself as a simple platformer, you start from the top of the level, and you try to progress to the bottom, hopefully, to find fortune and glory. You got ropes, bombs, and they're all yours. You even figure out there are shopkeepers that can give you more items. The tutorial does a great job at setting up what's ahead, but the main thing I took away from it, is how misleading the level design of it is compared to the actual challenge.

The tutorial is preset, and what I mean by that is, when you die, the layout's the same. Each time you die in the tutorial, you're given the luxury to learn from your mistakes, and repeat what you need to do...just more efficiently, due to the level remaining the same. The main game is NOTHING like this. It's stated near the end of the tutorial that each time you die, the caves shift around, creating new layouts. You don't know truly how tough that makes things until you reach Caves 1-1 for the very first time. You may have died to an arrow trap, a pile of spikes, or you may have been caught off guard by reanimated skeletons, possibly enemies being freed from the very pots you smashed. You may die over and over too, and this is most likely due to the levels being different every time. But then...after about a dozen deaths, you may begin to learn something. While stuff gets randomized each time you die, each area in the game will always remain the same. It may sound complicated, but you only really notice it after a couple of deaths. Each area will always have a certain set of enemies, with specific patterns almost every time. You may even find certain items that you can get from said enemies. You learn what the tutorial actually taught you.

Probably the very best thing about this game is the way it's designed. It's randomized, and while that may sound chaotic like I mentioned, each area has something that will always remain the same. This teaches you, the player, to learn each quirk an area has to offer, and if you're successful, you'll use that to pass onto the next area, descending deeper into the labyrinth that is Spelunky. Derek Yu, the guy that made the game, is what I consider to be a genius when it comes to level design. The game, while being randomized, is carefully designed to not exactly be bullshit, or in other words, make the game difficult via artificial means. So in a way, there's no real reason to get mad every time you die, because every death is probably your fault. It's meant to be that way. That's the beauty of Spelunky, learning to make sense of the chaos being thrown at you in each area, level after level.

Derek Yu and the team at Mossmouth knew how to recapture the old-school difficulty of Nintendo's NES titles and improve upon their philosophy, where the only way to get better is to learn from why you failed. So get better, or else, you're gonna be stuck at a certain part for quite a while. I've sunk about 77 hours into this game and managed to get the true ending after 508 attempts, and I am writing this review right after finishing it. This game deserves the status of being a true classic, because this game is immensely rewarding, and not solely because you made it to the end of a really hard game, but because that while being chaotic in it's nature, is fair towards the player, subtly teaching them how to master every mechanic, find every secret, and eventually achieve the ultimate run. I won't mention how it ends, but the game's message is there in the end, the journey is what matters, not the destination.

I highly recommend this game to anyone searching for a challenging, truly difficult game, with a rewarding satisfaction when you finish it for the very first time. It's a game that I'll compare to future games when it comes to level design, and how to scale difficulty while managing its progression throughout the runtime. Make sure to look for items that may connect to a set piece in a corresponding area, because it's satisfying finding all of them, on your own. Don't play this game with a "git gud" mindset, really go at your own pace, and you'll experience everything in no time. It's no doubt one of THE hardest games ever in my opinion, and honestly...it's probably in my Top 10. I've never felt this sure about a game in a long while, and it's the first game I've given a proper review, I just had to. Can't wait to get right into the sequel, and hopefully review that in the near future. Good luck future and current Spelunkers, hopefully, you will have, and maybe had as much fun as I did!

10/10

Spelunky is one of the most psychotic games I've ever played, which is why it's officially third place on my mental list of "roguelikes I actually enjoy quite a bit". Dying to every obstacle and enemy is part of the learning process at the beginning of your journey, and the same applies to the latter end of your journey, for similar and entirely different reasons. The funniest part is that I can't really call any particular death unfair; it's almost always the consequences of your own actions, no matter how chaotic your downfall is. Spelunky doesn't mind if you don't dwell on your demise either, one button press on the results screen and you're straight into another run. That's how they getcha. Go for another run. You might die instantly, or you might go all the way. Discovering playground rumor-tier secrets, angering shopkeepers, sacrificing damsels to Kali; it's all in a day's work for Spelunky guy.