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A while ago I got envious of this vintage looking platformer my partner was playing, and I wound up buying it on Steam. I think it cost me five dollars. It was on sale. It’s funny – I will spend way too many dollars on makeup and nail polish and board games, but I’m phenomenally stingy when it comes to digital products. I cringe and procrastinate with buying things on Steam, or on Android. But this? Even I have to admit that this was one of the best five dollars’ I’ve ever spent.
This is vintage Spelunky. It looks clunky as all get out, but according to my partner the play was equally as good as the new one.
The game is called Spelunky, and it’s made by one Derek Yu. It turns out I kind of have a type, with games, and my type is the vintage looking platformer. Spelunky fits this bill well. The one that’s out at the moment is officially called Spelunky HD, because its precursor, which came out in 2008, had pretty basic graphics. The remake plays exactly the same but looks a bit shinier. It retains its style though, and that’s a huge part of what makes me love it.
In Spelunky, you play a spelunker (surprise surprise) who is on the hunt for a golden idol. The whole thing seems to be based on Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. You’ll encounter rolling boulders and arrow traps and the like. [Thankfully, there’s no reference to Nazis.] Spelunky employs the permadeath dynamic: that is, every game you play is self-contained. You can’t keep items, you can’t keep your loot. You die – that’s it. Start again. The maps are randomly generated, too, so every game’s different. You pick up different items that help you (or hinder you – cough web gun) and the aim of the game is to gather as much money as possible in the four themed areas before you succumb to your inevitable horrible death.
Cannot even cope with how cute these characters are. I play as that pirate chick.
The game looks simple, and it is, but it is also deceptively hard. There’s about a million different ways to die, and in my 271 hours of play time, I’ve racked up quite a few of them (that’s 1484 deaths in total). You can get hurt by enemies, or you can fall on spikes. Arrow traps and tiki traps and my favourite aggressive block traps really rip your knickers, and if you steal an idol then you’re going to incur some serious cave wrath. And assuming you’ve managed to survive so far, just you wait: this horrifying ghost rocks up on each level after two and a half minutes, and it floats around chasing you. If it catches you, you’re dead. Swell. (See: rage quitting, below.)
There’s also a daily challenge play mode, and this is my favourite thing. Everyone gets the same map, and one go at the challenge. When you die, you see your rank against everyone else who’s done today’s challenge, worldwide. There is some serious competition between myself and my partner (just quietly? I almost always win).
This is Spelunky HD, the new one. The one that has so far taken up 271 hours of my life. Even the enemies are cute! Look at the man-eating plant! The bats!
Man, I love this game. I love everything about it. The characters are super cute (and collectible – you start with that little guy in the top left, plus a few others). I’m totally into the permadeath thing, because it means you don’t get overly involved. A game can take half an hour, if you’re doing well, or if you’re like me, and you have a tendency to rage quit, it can last thirty seconds. It’s stupidly challenging, stupidly frustrating, and even though I’ve been playing for ages, I keep finding new and exciting ways to die. The game’s full of easter eggs too, which I’ll let you discover for yourself. If you want some hints, check out the game’s enormous presence on twitch (there’s one particularly impressive player called Bananasaurus Rex). Oh, and you know what else is cool? You can plug an XBox controller into your computer and play that way. This is great for me, because I hate the WASD format with the fire of a thousand suns.
If you’re keen to give Spelunky a shot, you can buy it on Steam – you can wait for a sale if you’re like me, as they do come along pretty often. It’s available for Mac and PC as well as XBox 360, PS3, PS4 and PSVita. I’ll be pretty surprised if you don’t love it.
When I die an unexpectedly terrible death in Spelunky, I usually shake my head and quit. But give it a few hours, and without fail I’m playing again. So clearly, Derek Yu is doing something right. This is downright addictive.
Have you played? What do you think?
