Spelunky
Spelunky is supposedly inspired from La-Mulana, a 2D platformer made 10 years ago with the same premise -- the protagonist explores a tomb and hoards as much of its treasure as he could while avoiding the numerous death traps. He is equipped with a whip and other tools to aid him in his quest. So how does Spelunky fare against its older counterpart?
Like La-Mulana, Derek Yu chose to make a 2D game with 8-bit graphics and sound. The lo-fi style is popular among indie game developers as it is relatively easier than creating 3D artwork and orchestral soundtracks. In fact, it's simply not practical; many of them financed their own games and do not have the time or budget for the quality seen in AAA games. Lo-fi doesn't necessarily mean low quality either. Many indie games raise the bar with unique art styles, moving towards innovation and creativity. While some may lambaste Spelunky for its DOS era graphics, it does come with a kind of charm and retro nostalgia. Pixel art might be dismissed as cheap or dated but it is not easy working in a very limited canvas and color palette to create an image that is to be understood as more than the sum of its pixels.
That was a close one.
The tutorial level guides new players through the controls. You could walk, jump, run to gain momentum to jump further. The standard weapon, a whip, efficiently eliminates smaller foes as well as break containers for the treasure inside. Ropes could be used to gain access to higher places or to safely climb down a cliff and bombs, which destroy everything within a few squares, are useful to open up new areas.
The key feature of Spelunky, and probably its greatest hook are the procedurally generated levels. What this means is the levels are generated by the game instead of manually designed by the game designer. What this means for the gamer is a completely different experience every time you play Spelunky or every time the hero gets killed by a speeding boulder or a man-eating plant (and trust me, this will happen a lot). As such, the gameplay never gets stale and is fun to play over and over again. Procedural generation has existed in games before. Spore randomly generates worlds, environments and creatures, even creates the animations for user-created creatures on the fly, which was quite a technical feat. However, the problem of unpredictable situations and thus complexity arise when procedural generation is used. With Spelunky, the game designer still maintains control over the levels; every level has a solution, a path to the exit door, even if the player has run out of bombs and ropes. A well designed level is the difference between a frustrated gamer and a player that comes back for more "punishment".
The rules of the game mechanics make for varied and complex gameplay. For instance, the simple ability to carry objects. The player could pick up anything from treasure chests and rocks to damsels-in-distress and bombs. From there, they could drop it, throw it, or use the object if it has a function. Carrying the damsel to the exit nets the player an extra life but most players will learn that she has more uses than that. A common strategy is to throw any object you have in hand at enemies to kill them with the impact, even the damsel you're supposed to rescue. The damsel gets up unscathed and you're free to reuse her as a weapon. Interesting enough, this "unplanned" feature generated some controversy about objectifying females and whether or not the game is sexist. Still, the point of the game is fun and these crazy quirks add a lot of humor to the game.
Furthermore, the interactions with objects and various characters in the game create a lot of depth in the narrative. Imagine: our hero lops a bomb at a wall to rescue a maiden in distress. Instead, he miscalculates; the bomb bounces off the wall and lands on an altar. The impending destruction of the altar angers the dark god who summons a swarm of spiders after our hero. In the ensuing panic, he slips off a cliff and lands on a yeti. The yeti flings him into a wall and the impact instantly kills him. As the lifeless corpse bounces off the wall and back into the hands of the yeti, it throws him back with the same force. We see the "Game Over" message but not for the yeti, who continuously plays with the dead body like a sport.
Rarely in a game has dying been so much fun: death by snake, death by school of piranha, death by exploding frogs, death by spikes, etc. Spelunky is not a forgiving game; you start out with 4 lives, it takes a great deal of concentration to spot death traps, and being calm in dangerous situations so you don't run off a high cliff. At this time, my death count is 186 while my sister has crossed the 1000 threshold. What makes the game so addictive? The key factor is in how the game handles death, or failure. The difficulty is different every time because the levels are always uniquely generated. There exists an element of luck. Consider the jackpot machine: it is addictive because the player knows there is a chance of winning and even when they do not win, the flashing lights and sounds are fun to experience. It is important that the player feels that they learn something from their mistake and would possibly be better the next time round.
And these are what makes Spelunky one of the best indie titles. It reminds us that games do not need to rely on next-gen graphics to be fun, harking back to a golden era of games with 8-bit graphics. Also in the spirit of indie games, it is released to the public free and the source code is also available to anyone. The game is also slated for a XBLA release.
-- Benjamin
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