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I want to make a comment on Spelunky on such a long time; here is a fraction of my thoughts: Spelunky is one of the greatest video games ever created. It is pu

by webkike 10y ago

I want to make a comment on Spelunky on such a long time; here is a fraction of my thoughts: Spelunky is one of the greatest video games ever created. It is pure perfection and I believe this to the fullest possible extent since playing the game for what must be seven years now. It is an absolute treatise in good gameplay mechanics. Zero percent of it is an interactive story (save the intro and end, barely), it simply excels in being some of purest expression of what makes a game fun to play. It has a little physics engine - one with no positional resolution (except for tiles) - that keeps the game constantly feeling smooth. The reason acceleration is put into a game, is because linear motion is so bizarre without it. That's kind of off topic but it's true. What some people don't realize is that you can play spelunky however you want and it stays challenging, and the way you play the game changes over time. When I first started playing, I would methodically go through most of the rooms. Now I go straight to the exit. That may seem like hardly a difference, but the process was very much an evolution of giving up what I thought was necessary to beat the game using my own skills. The only flaw I have found with Spelunky (and this is arguable): the teleporter is rng. mr yu pls fix. I have so much more to say but I won't bore you.

ufo 10y ago
One example of Spelunky's design that shows how clever it is is that World 3 is much easier than World 2. Conventional video-game logic dictates that levels should get get harder as the game progresses but Spelunky is a permadeath game (die once and start again from World 1) and having a "breather" between the very difficult World 2 and World 4 is actually a great choice for the pacing.
- chongli 10y ago
  The ice caves is easier than the swamp if you've got a lot of items. The ice caves is brutally hard if you don't. Try using a tunnel man shortcut to the ice caves and play it without using any ropes!
  - ufo 10y ago
    In a way, that makes it even more genius. If you reach the ice caves without any items you are probably speedrunning or going for a low% run, in which case you will appreciate the extra challenge :)
    - webkike 10y ago
      you sound like a speedrunner yourself maybe... ever visit /r/spelunky or submit your pbs to mosstier?
      - ufo 10y ago
        I'm flattered but I'm not skilled enough for that! Getting a sub 8-min run was hard enough and I have yet to get a no gold one. btw, for those who don't know the game, the added longevity that comes from these self-inflicted challenges people can come up with (like speedrunning or no-gold) is another neat thing about Spelunky
zzalpha 10y ago
Weird, as a roguelike fan, I find Spelunky enormously tedious and repetitive. I would much rather crack out BoI or good ol' Nethack. And that's not for lack of trying. I've spent many hours trying to find satisfaction in Spelunky. But no matter the amount of time I put into it, it always seems like you're far more likely to be punished by bad luck than rewarded for skill or thoughtful play. Perhaps I've just never gotten over some hump in the game, but I also find it remarkably shallow for a roguelike. Of course this is all a matter of taste, but I thought it only fair to offer a counterpoint to your glowing review. :)
- ufo 10y ago
  I kind of have the opposite feeling. Whenever I die on Spelunky I feel like it was my fault, usually because I was rushing though things too quickly or because I tried to go through a dangerous area without spending resources. That said, this probably does explain a bit the contradicting reviews from you and the grandparent poster. Not having the game boil down to luck (or feel like that is the case) is what separates the good procedurally generated games from the bad ones.
- chongli 10y ago
  I'm a veteran roguelike player as well. I've beaten BoI, ascended NetHack quite a few times and beaten Spelunky many times as well. Out of those 3, Spelunky is the only one I keep coming back to. NetHack and BoI, to me, are monstrously tedious exercises in building an "ascension kit" and then merely brute-forcing the remainder of the game with it. Spelunky, on the other hand, stays fresh and challenging no matter what items you get. As for luck? Spelunky is the least luck-based game out of the 3. It's possible to beat the game with no items at all. The enemies all behave in deterministic ways and there are no dice rolls involved in the combat. Winning comes down to a combination of manual skills and experience at reading the situations and reacting appropriately. Most of the times I die these days come down to taking unnecessary risks (milking the ghost for diamonds or murdering all the shopkeepers in the black market) in the hopes of racking up a really high score.
  - zzalpha 10y ago
s_m_t 10y ago
I disagree about the teleporter. I think it is one of the best applications of rng in any videogame. From the wiki: "Pressing the action button while carrying one will teleport you in the direction you are facing. You will appear a random number of tiles away in the direction you are holding, either 4-8 tiles horizontally or upwards, or 5-9 tiles downwards. Note that you have to jump in order to teleport downwards; otherwise you will just drop the teleporter. If the destination tile is a solid block, the teleporter tries to find an empty space up to 3 tiles above the selected location - If there is no viable space, the teleporter will warp you into a solid block and you will be killed." You can indeed use the teleporter 100% safely (as long as your judgement of distance is correct, this of course makes it even more fun) or you can use it as a hail mary in desperate times. Of course, depending on the amount of 4 tile high walls in front of you it might not be much of a risk, this is what makes Spelunky so fun to me, making risk minimizing decision in a split second, I think the teleporter perfectly captures this.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  You can use it safely as long as you've read the wiki. If you're trying to play unspoiled, it will kill you. (Unless you only carry it for desperate escapes, and that means you're not carrying a weapon, which has vastly broader utility.) I feel like it breaks two of my favorite things about Spelunky: one, that you usually know why you died and learn something from it; and two, that you can eventually work everything out without consulting the spoilers. Both of those things are big problems in a lot of serious roguelikes, IMO, and Spelunky handles them beautifully for the most part. (Speaking as someone who 100%ed the original PC version, and sank some hours into the Xbox version. I think, in the end, I'd gotten all the Spelunky I wanted from the original, and I wasn't a big fan of the music or art style in the update.)
  - intoverflow2 10y ago
    > I wasn't a big fan of the music or art style in the update BOI definitely handled it's artstyle refresh better, found the HD Spelunky muddy and muddled compared to the original and a lot of needless animated unskippable fluff in the menu and intro screens that means it takes way longer to start a game than it should do.
Cyranix 10y ago
I agree wholeheartedly. As a gamer who now only makes time for games I can play for short sessions, Spelunky was an absolute godsend. I've only put it down because my gaming time is even more constrained and because I achieved my personal goal of a $1MM daily challenge win (after a lot of near misses and managing to post some pretty high scores!). Discovering the patterns within the apparent randomness (without the aid of wikis, for the most part) was a big part of the game's appeal to me. Depending on what kind of randomness I'm facing, I might need to make quick decisions about timing or routing or resource usage, often needing to weigh risk vs. reward along several dimensions at once. This game does so much with so little, and the attention to detail and thoughtful design have always shone through for me, all along my journey from bewildered novice to cunning whiz. With a huge back catalog of video games in existence, it says a lot that one can look forward to returning to a timeless classic like Spelunky.
lillesvin 10y ago
The teleporter isn't purely RNG. Runners like Bananasaurus Rex, LateDog, Pibonacci and others exhibit a very high level of mastery of it and have "accidents" far less often than us mere mortals.
- webkike 10y ago
  If you watch their runs there are many times when they are at the mercy of the RNG. In fact, I believe in the latest any% WR by Kinnijup he makes a hail marry teleport at then. Sure, it can be mastered, I just don't like how there are essentially two random variables at play - the distance of the teleporter and blocks beneath you.
phatfish 10y ago
Spelunky is a masterpiece, and testament to that is the depth of the mechanics and secrets. I must have been playing it for about 2 years before i noticed you could whip arrows from the arrow traps out of the air with the right timing. It makes sense as you can interact with almost every object, but trying something unusual and having it actually work as you expect puts Spelunky in a different league from most games.
- Zelmor 10y ago
  You can also carry rats with you, who will take the arrow damage instead of you. Meat shields!
nandkeypull 10y ago
If you enjoyed Spelunky, I think you might also like Vagante. It's like a more dungeon-crawler incarnation of Spelunky without the time-constraints of the Ghost and more weapons (sword, dagger, bow-and-arrow, mace, etc), items, and magic spells. Incredibly addictive.

by webkike 10y ago

ufo 10y ago

One example of Spelunky's design that shows how clever it is is that World 3 is much easier than World 2. Conventional video-game logic dictates that levels should get get harder as the game progresses but Spelunky is a permadeath game (die once and start again from World 1) and having a "breather" between the very difficult World 2 and World 4 is actually a great choice for the pacing.

chongli 10y ago
The ice caves is easier than the swamp if you've got a lot of items. The ice caves is brutally hard if you don't. Try using a tunnel man shortcut to the ice caves and play it without using any ropes!
- ufo 10y ago
  In a way, that makes it even more genius. If you reach the ice caves without any items you are probably speedrunning or going for a low% run, in which case you will appreciate the extra challenge :)
  - webkike 10y ago
    you sound like a speedrunner yourself maybe... ever visit /r/spelunky or submit your pbs to mosstier?
    - ufo 10y ago
      I'm flattered but I'm not skilled enough for that! Getting a sub 8-min run was hard enough and I have yet to get a no gold one. btw, for those who don't know the game, the added longevity that comes from these self-inflicted challenges people can come up with (like speedrunning or no-gold) is another neat thing about Spelunky

zzalpha 10y ago

Weird, as a roguelike fan, I find Spelunky enormously tedious and repetitive. I would much rather crack out BoI or good ol' Nethack. And that's not for lack of trying. I've spent many hours trying to find satisfaction in Spelunky. But no matter the amount of time I put into it, it always seems like you're far more likely to be punished by bad luck than rewarded for skill or thoughtful play. Perhaps I've just never gotten over some hump in the game, but I also find it remarkably shallow for a roguelike. Of course this is all a matter of taste, but I thought it only fair to offer a counterpoint to your glowing review. :)

ufo 10y ago
I kind of have the opposite feeling. Whenever I die on Spelunky I feel like it was my fault, usually because I was rushing though things too quickly or because I tried to go through a dangerous area without spending resources. That said, this probably does explain a bit the contradicting reviews from you and the grandparent poster. Not having the game boil down to luck (or feel like that is the case) is what separates the good procedurally generated games from the bad ones.
chongli 10y ago
I'm a veteran roguelike player as well. I've beaten BoI, ascended NetHack quite a few times and beaten Spelunky many times as well. Out of those 3, Spelunky is the only one I keep coming back to. NetHack and BoI, to me, are monstrously tedious exercises in building an "ascension kit" and then merely brute-forcing the remainder of the game with it. Spelunky, on the other hand, stays fresh and challenging no matter what items you get. As for luck? Spelunky is the least luck-based game out of the 3. It's possible to beat the game with no items at all. The enemies all behave in deterministic ways and there are no dice rolls involved in the combat. Winning comes down to a combination of manual skills and experience at reading the situations and reacting appropriately. Most of the times I die these days come down to taking unnecessary risks (milking the ghost for diamonds or murdering all the shopkeepers in the black market) in the hopes of racking up a really high score.
- zzalpha 10y ago

s_m_t 10y ago

I disagree about the teleporter. I think it is one of the best applications of rng in any videogame. From the wiki: "Pressing the action button while carrying one will teleport you in the direction you are facing. You will appear a random number of tiles away in the direction you are holding, either 4-8 tiles horizontally or upwards, or 5-9 tiles downwards. Note that you have to jump in order to teleport downwards; otherwise you will just drop the teleporter. If the destination tile is a solid block, the teleporter tries to find an empty space up to 3 tiles above the selected location - If there is no viable space, the teleporter will warp you into a solid block and you will be killed." You can indeed use the teleporter 100% safely (as long as your judgement of distance is correct, this of course makes it even more fun) or you can use it as a hail mary in desperate times. Of course, depending on the amount of 4 tile high walls in front of you it might not be much of a risk, this is what makes Spelunky so fun to me, making risk minimizing decision in a split second, I think the teleporter perfectly captures this.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago
You can use it safely as long as you've read the wiki. If you're trying to play unspoiled, it will kill you. (Unless you only carry it for desperate escapes, and that means you're not carrying a weapon, which has vastly broader utility.) I feel like it breaks two of my favorite things about Spelunky: one, that you usually know why you died and learn something from it; and two, that you can eventually work everything out without consulting the spoilers. Both of those things are big problems in a lot of serious roguelikes, IMO, and Spelunky handles them beautifully for the most part. (Speaking as someone who 100%ed the original PC version, and sank some hours into the Xbox version. I think, in the end, I'd gotten all the Spelunky I wanted from the original, and I wasn't a big fan of the music or art style in the update.)
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  > I wasn't a big fan of the music or art style in the update BOI definitely handled it's artstyle refresh better, found the HD Spelunky muddy and muddled compared to the original and a lot of needless animated unskippable fluff in the menu and intro screens that means it takes way longer to start a game than it should do.

Cyranix 10y ago

I agree wholeheartedly. As a gamer who now only makes time for games I can play for short sessions, Spelunky was an absolute godsend. I've only put it down because my gaming time is even more constrained and because I achieved my personal goal of a $1MM daily challenge win (after a lot of near misses and managing to post some pretty high scores!). Discovering the patterns within the apparent randomness (without the aid of wikis, for the most part) was a big part of the game's appeal to me. Depending on what kind of randomness I'm facing, I might need to make quick decisions about timing or routing or resource usage, often needing to weigh risk vs. reward along several dimensions at once. This game does so much with so little, and the attention to detail and thoughtful design have always shone through for me, all along my journey from bewildered novice to cunning whiz. With a huge back catalog of video games in existence, it says a lot that one can look forward to returning to a timeless classic like Spelunky.

lillesvin 10y ago

The teleporter isn't purely RNG. Runners like Bananasaurus Rex, LateDog, Pibonacci and others exhibit a very high level of mastery of it and have "accidents" far less often than us mere mortals.

webkike 10y ago
If you watch their runs there are many times when they are at the mercy of the RNG. In fact, I believe in the latest any% WR by Kinnijup he makes a hail marry teleport at then. Sure, it can be mastered, I just don't like how there are essentially two random variables at play - the distance of the teleporter and blocks beneath you.

phatfish 10y ago

Spelunky is a masterpiece, and testament to that is the depth of the mechanics and secrets. I must have been playing it for about 2 years before i noticed you could whip arrows from the arrow traps out of the air with the right timing. It makes sense as you can interact with almost every object, but trying something unusual and having it actually work as you expect puts Spelunky in a different league from most games.

Zelmor 10y ago
You can also carry rats with you, who will take the arrow damage instead of you. Meat shields!

nandkeypull 10y ago

If you enjoyed Spelunky, I think you might also like Vagante. It's like a more dungeon-crawler incarnation of Spelunky without the time-constraints of the Ghost and more weapons (sword, dagger, bow-and-arrow, mace, etc), items, and magic spells. Incredibly addictive.