Review | Spelunky
Format: PC | Genre: Platformer | Publisher: Mossmouth | Developer: Mossmouth | Release date: 01/09/09 | RRP: Free!
By Lewis Denby
This is, to the best of my knowledge, only the second free game we’ve deemed worthy of a full review, rather than coverage in the indie section.
Freeware titles have to either be ridiculously high-profile or suitably awesome to qualify for such plaudits. Spelunky fits into the latter category with so little doubt it’s unbelievable. If there’s any justice at all in this cruel gaming industry, it’ll firmly cement itself in the former as well.
We first covered Derek Yu’s fabulous release back in the old magazine era, when J.D. showered it with praise. That was in its long public beta phase, during which the game has undergone plenty of bug-fixing and received lots of swanky new additions. The result is a finished game for which I have literally no complaints. The graphical glitches? They’re entirely gone. The occasional freezing? Very occasional during level transitions, but basically eradicated. Everything’s refined, gloriously addictive and beautifully unbalanced.
//Deeper and down
The premise is thus. You’re an Indiana Jones-esque explorer, goin’-a-spelunkin’ in a cave, for reasons cleverly alluded to (though never overtly revealed) in a semi-randomised opening sequence. The goal is to get from the top of each level to the bottom, escape through a door, and repeat until the end of the game – an ambition you won’t realise for weeks, if not months, if not never.
Though it’s basically a platformer, Spelunky takes a lot of its brilliance from the Rogue-like genre, a collection of games spawning from 1980’s Rogue involving procedural generation and absolutely no save points. Each time you die, you’re deposited right back at the beginning of the whole game, and each attempt sees you exploring entirely new play areas, constructed on the fly by the game’s code.
So while Spelunky is tremendously, flabbergastingly, ludicrously difficult, it never wears thin. Effectively, you’re not flung back to the beginning of the game. You’re flung onwards to the beginning of a different game. It’s a staggeringly effective way of presenting the experience, and one that really could do to be explored in more titles in the months and years to come. It means Spelunky has the ability to constantly surprise, and utterly captivate where other games would quickly grow frustrating and tiresome.
The game is frustrating, of course. It’s chaotically unhinged, and not in any way fair. Instant-death traps litter the world, and since Spelunky restricts your view to only a small area of a given level, they’re often out of sight when they bring your game crashing to an end. Missiles fire from off-screen. You’ll drop down a seemingly innocuous hole to find yourself embedded on an enormous spike. You’ll break open a jar, usually containing treasure, only for a snake to jump out and eat you. Spelunky does all this without any warning, it makes no excuses for its abhorrent behaviour, and it’s absolutely brilliant.
That’s the core of what makes Spelunky so viciously addictive. It’s like gambling with hugely unimpressive odds. You know there’s bugger all chance of that win, but goodness, the prize on offer is too good to pass up. So you gamble away your time, hours on end, and you’ve still not beaten the game, but beating the game is the last thing on your mind. You’re hooked. You’ll never escape these caves.
[Continues...]
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I want this stupid game. electronic cigarette
E-cigarettes are great. I own two; I recommend the Envy.
The last word of the 3rd paragraph should be “ever” instead of “never”.
I can google, but for christe’s sake, is one gotdamn link to much to ask?
[...] See the rest here: Spelunky review (PC) | Resolution Magazine [...]
No Nobody: link’s in the game info bar at the top.
Stanley: No it shouldn’t. “If ever” would have been right. I decided to be awkward, though, as I’m fond of doing. :-)
Dude,
you say you really liked the game where’s the link love?
http://spelunkyworld.com/
[...] Spelunky review This is, to the best of my knowledge, only the second free game we’ve deemed worthy of a full review, rather than coverage in the indie section. [...]
[...] is cool, the levels are well constructed and you never get bored playing the game. Here to the more detailed review and here to the [...]
[...] is cool, the levels are well constructed and you never get bored playing the game. Here to the more detailed review and here to the [...]
Just a few comments.
The first is that the “Five Finger Discount” section is quite a bit of a spoiler. It’s almost the only thing you can spoil in the game; explaining the consequences when you successfully do steal. I would recommend revising it, to just simply say the game becomes possibly a bit unfair after doing it.
I feel the game is only really unfair the first time you encounter something new. You don’t know what to expect, and it’s usually your doom as a result. But the resulting deaths are usually comical enough that even those are more amusing than frustrating. After that, you know what’s coming and you can avoid it, if you’re clever enough, fast enough, or have the right equipment. You can’t really be killed by anything offscreen, unless you do something unwise such as fall too far (fatal even without spikes) or run too fast (running is only useful when you know where you’re going). There are no insta-deaths you cannot avoid, again assuming you have the rope, bomb, or other tool needed to defeat it. I can count on one hand the number of games where I ran out of a tool I needed after carefully managing my inventory. That’s what makes the game so great: When you die, it’s your fault. You made a mistake. The game wasn’t unfair, you just couldn’t measure up.
Finally, it’s a great review. :-) It captures what makes Spelunky really interesting and fun, despite it being such a simple (in some senses) game.
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