Spelunky gives you a master-class in platforming
With the recent announcement of Spelunky 2, a lot of gamers are powering up their devices and downloading the major hit from 2012. Spelunky, a game originally released for free in 2008 as a small, innovative 16-bit platformer, made huge waves when the developer polished it up for a release on the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade. The Arcade is gone now, but Spelunky is alive and well. With ports to PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, Derek Yu's first shot at game design is a ubiquitous title that has made itself one of the most well-known independent titles to date.
The premise is simple. An adventurer of a similar style to a popular Nazi-fighting archaeology professor sets off to explore a mine with a dangerous legend. Upon entering, a curse is placed upon him, and his pursuit of treasure becomes an unending cycle of death and rebirth. If he is able to leave at all, it must be by retrieving the treasure at the end of the tunnels.
From a gameplay standpoint, Spelunky did something that no one else had done before its original release in 2008. Spelunky is a platforming game, with a key aspect borrowed from Rogue, a popular game from 1980. In Spelunky and Rogue, when you die, you don't restart from a checkpoint. You are thrown back to the very beginning of the game and the levels are completely different. While this sounds frustrating, players loved these games because they are excellent teachers that reward the time you spend with them.
In Spelunky, you will die many, many times. But each death comes with new knowledge. The game tells you explicitly what happened, and records an entry in your journal about it, so that you can look back at the lessons you've learned and the enemies you've encountered. As you make your way deeper into the tunnels of Spelunky, it give you the tools you need to go even deeper next time.
Platforming is one of the earliest genres of game, and is what most people started out with by playing Mario on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Typical platformers reward player experience by giving you more than one life and by keeping the level exactly the same no matter how many times you play it. In this way, players could learn optimal paths to victory.
As a rogue-like platformer, Spelunky asks a player to dive a bit deeper, and rewards the player with specific and transferable skills. It doesn't expect you to start strong, but it hopes to give you strength. Spelunky is the first platformer I've played in a long time, and when I started, I felt like I was completely new to it. If you're looking to enter into games as a hobby, I think it's a great start.
Title: Spelunky (2012)
Price Point: $15
Platforms: Windows PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Gaming Skills Learned:
Platforming
Keyboard-only controls (PC)
Single-joystick + buttons controls (PS4, Xbox One)
Pattern recognition
Twitch-based gameplay
The premise is simple. An adventurer of a similar style to a popular Nazi-fighting archaeology professor sets off to explore a mine with a dangerous legend. Upon entering, a curse is placed upon him, and his pursuit of treasure becomes an unending cycle of death and rebirth. If he is able to leave at all, it must be by retrieving the treasure at the end of the tunnels.
From a gameplay standpoint, Spelunky did something that no one else had done before its original release in 2008. Spelunky is a platforming game, with a key aspect borrowed from Rogue, a popular game from 1980. In Spelunky and Rogue, when you die, you don't restart from a checkpoint. You are thrown back to the very beginning of the game and the levels are completely different. While this sounds frustrating, players loved these games because they are excellent teachers that reward the time you spend with them.
In Spelunky, you will die many, many times. But each death comes with new knowledge. The game tells you explicitly what happened, and records an entry in your journal about it, so that you can look back at the lessons you've learned and the enemies you've encountered. As you make your way deeper into the tunnels of Spelunky, it give you the tools you need to go even deeper next time.
Platforming is one of the earliest genres of game, and is what most people started out with by playing Mario on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Typical platformers reward player experience by giving you more than one life and by keeping the level exactly the same no matter how many times you play it. In this way, players could learn optimal paths to victory.
As a rogue-like platformer, Spelunky asks a player to dive a bit deeper, and rewards the player with specific and transferable skills. It doesn't expect you to start strong, but it hopes to give you strength. Spelunky is the first platformer I've played in a long time, and when I started, I felt like I was completely new to it. If you're looking to enter into games as a hobby, I think it's a great start.
Title: Spelunky (2012)
Price Point: $15
Platforms: Windows PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Gaming Skills Learned:
Platforming
Keyboard-only controls (PC)
Single-joystick + buttons controls (PS4, Xbox One)
Pattern recognition
Twitch-based gameplay
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