By PATRICK CAVAZOS
Staff Writer
The Spelunky remake commonly referred to as just Spelunky is a, from the ground up, a remake of the classic flash game roguelike Spelunky Classic. This game is infamous for its jaw-grinding difficulty and far too addictive gameplay. As a roguelike, Spelunky lacks any real human-made structure to its levels and enemy placement or events, it makes it so much atmospheric as if you really were exploring hidden ancient caves while fending off the beast’s nature throws at you.
You play as Spelunky Guy and his friends with a massive choice of characters, who only differ visually but soon you’ll find yourself getting attached to many of them. Your character finds themselves in this magical cave and ruins in which death is not final and you return to the beginning of your trip through the caves each and every time you die. Along with the full structure of the caves shifting each time you decide to challenge the trials again, each and every attempt to beat the game is completely different from the last. Spelunky, as mentioned before, is a rogue like, which simply is a randomly generated heavy experience, in this case, all levels, items, resources, and even bosses are randomized in their placement and if they’ll even appear throughout your run and when you die you restart the game completely over. Due to this random nature and permadeath, the game is built to be short but hard as you get closer and closer each time to the end which is where the addictivity comes from.
The best part is the gameplay’s simplicity, you only have a limited set of moves and never gain another permanent one. You can from the beginning, whip, crawl, jump, use a climbing rope and throw bombs, that’s all you have to work with and items only enhance these abilities or change their properties. Such as spring boots making you jump higher or weapons taking the place of your whip to increase damage or range. It’s all easy to remember and quickly lets the player escape the confusion of the scenarios and quickly becomes a master at planning their path through. Then whenever you’re confident enough you can start gaining risky treasures or attack shopkeepers to steal their items, however, you’ll surely be wanted for this as every level form then will have a shotgun-wielding shopkeep focused on getting you through any means. It is highly encouraging of risk-reward gameplay which creates an exciting dynamic in the game.
This is a historic game in the indie gaming community and it’s easy to see why when playing it or its sequel which only improves on the whole experience in every way. I highly encourage you to buy and play this game as it will give you hours upon hours of joy and fun with friends and family in multiplayer too.