Spelunky is a game that hates you. It’s randomized, filled with secrets and only a few helping hands throughout your adventure, and a few too many mistakes sends you back to the beginning of it all. There are no exploits, nor cheese to be had. There is only you, and your persistence.

As of writing, I haven’t even completed Spelunky, technically I’m not even a halfway through the game. So why am I reviewing it if I haven’t dropped/finished it yet? Because this is an experience that no other game has been able to capture. I’ve played numerous roguelikes in my days, with my favorite game of all time being a roguelike. Few (really only The Binding of Isaac) have managed to capture my attention like Spelunky. Unlike a good chunk of roguelikes which rely on the player’s reflexes and skill (which isn’t bad design for the record), Spelunky throws you into a random world and tells you to survive. You’ll find this incredibly difficult. Even with the less than threatening enemies, you’ll still find yourself dying over and over again. The goal to success is expirimentation, Spelunky’s strong suit. Since runs only last a few minutes each (10-15 minutes usually), I was more open to expirimentation with the game, compared to other roguelikes where changing my strategy mid-way through could lead to a lost run of about an hour (or so). This (and The Binding of Isaac) are the only two roguelikes that I’ve seen actually get this right, and it’s disappointing, because it works in both games’ favor, and I think a lot of roguelikes would benefit from this (ENTER THE GUNGEON.). Suddenly, as you play, once you bend the rules, rather than banging your head against a wall, the game responds accordingly. You’ll find that Dart Traps are activated with motion, and even by other enemies. So carrying anything will substantially increase your chances of survival. You can use one of the ladies as an extra HP point, use her as a meat shield for those damned dart traps, or sacrifice her for a chance at an awesome cape. You can steal from the shopkeeper which will give you several bonus items, but you have to fight him, which can easily lead to your death. And then he cock blocks the gateway to the next levels. I’m only scratching the surface of what I’ve learned through my 3 hours of playtime, and it’s not only because some of it is second nature at this point. I hope to learn more about Spelunky in my many more hours to come. I’m not sure if I’ll ever complete Spelunky, because it’s so difficult, but wishful thinking leads me to believe I will. I’ve conquered dozens of unabashedly difficult games in my lifetime, so Spelunky may be no different. But for now, Spelunky is a game that has made me feel little games have ever done. Even if you won’t see the credits, play this game. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. (and thank you alpharad for bringing my attention to this game, love you dude :D)

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.

I can feel my drive to play this steadily waning. It's been three months. I've died hundreds of times. I don't want to play it anymore.

I love how fast paced it is. You can make so much progress in 10 minutes, and if you die, just jump right back in. The flow is beautiful. But god damn are the mines so BORING! If I can miraculously make it to the jungle with more than some bombs, paste and a fucking baseball glove, I'll probably make it all the way down into the Temple. But 85% of runs end in the mines, with nary a decent shop in sight, and I'm so sick of it. I'd love to beat this game one day, but I think that day is far, FAR from now.

one of my favourite games of all time. Spelunky is a genius game that combines great platforming controls with a gauntlet of randomly generated - yet almost always fair levels.

it's difficult to put my finger on what specifically makes this game so great. maybe it's the intrinsic tension from it's roguelike levels. maybe it's the systemic, destructible environment which is just begging for creative solutions to be concocted. maybe it's the mysterious secret levels. maybe it's the fact that in order to heal yourself, you have to rescue a dog and bring it to the exit, so that it can lick your face and give you a heart back.

even after 10 years, spelunky still goes hard, and still takes most modern roguelikes to school in terms of both progression and moment-to-moment gameplay. one of the all time greats!!!

Few games have managed to capture and keep my attention like Spelunky. I would say that it is simple to learn and hard to master, but it is deceptively complex and somewhat difficult to learn. It took me a long time to feel like I genuinely knew how to play in an intentional way, rather than being pushed along by the game’s procedural generation. The coherence of Spelunky kept me going, together with its smooth controls, exploration, and variety of possible runs. It could use fewer one-shot deaths, and I would prefer it if the sequel had moved further on from the trappings of colonial exploration, but nothing is perfect.

It took about ~300 deaths, but I fucking did it.

Almost everything in my original review still holds up. The Ice Caves is probably my least favorite area in the game but I still liked it, and Temple was a good sendoff to the game.

Hell? Doesn't exist, what are you talking about?

This game got me back into gaming after not playing anything for 2 months, that alone makes it very special to me. The first roguelite I have actually liked, mostly due to its length and the fact that it's a platformer.

I died/reset like 700 times before beating this on a blind playthrough but it never felt unfair, discovering how to do most things on your own on subsequent runs felt magical.

I also love the unscripted but hilarious sequence of events when a trap or an enemy knocks you back, it goes from quirky platformer to Looney Tunes in less than a second.

Very fitting soundtrack as well and the game has a lot of charm, I cannot wait to play Spelunky 2 and some of the games it drew inspiration from like La-Mulana but I will go for an easy/normal game before venturing into another insanely hard game such as this since I don't want to lose my sanity.

Spelunky feels unique in that, whilst being a multiple floor dungeon run type of roguelike, it surpasses the average game of the genre by having a lot of variables in it (and i don't mean potion effects). There's different variants of levels, different types of levels you can access on each floor...SECRETS! The game is built on secrets! What seems at first to be maybe a simple but fun indiana jones simulator turns into a game that has a lot more depth than you first thought. The world of Spelunky is always interesting and dynamic and for that I have to give it a buttload of credit cus it's what makes this game timeless and replayable even 7 years after first playing it.

The people who call this "hard but fair" must be playing an entirely different game than me, I certainly like this game but the number of BS deaths on my quest to conquer Hell I had is kind of hilarious.

I think the thing that makes me the most angry in this game is how badly RNG can fuck you though. Black market with no bomb boxes? Didn't see enough Kali altars to get the Kapala? You're gonna be up a fucking creek in the temple and hell let me tell you that much. And some items actively IMPEDE you such as the climbing gloves, and others are downright useless such as the spectacles.

Despite all of that, this game is a fun but downright masochistic roguelike, and I'm glad it isn't another roguelike where I go "this is isaac but worse" like I did with Gungeon and Hades to a degree. Good shit Splunky.

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