Too many of today’s videogames are roller-coaster rides, designed to create a sense of thrilling danger while in reality keeping you perfectly safe. Spelunky is designed to destroy you. It tells you all of its rules, does everything to make sure that you understand what can kill you, and then it beats you down until you get good enough to get one step further.
It would be maddening, if it weren’t such a refreshing escape from the usual cocoon of safety.
Spelunky, originally released for free on PC in 2008, has been thoroughly refreshed and polished up for its Xbox Live Arcade debut this week. Its gameplay mechanics are the product of roguelike design principles applied to a fast-moving side-scrolling platformer visually reminiscent of the classic Broderbund game Spelunker.
Its levels are randomly generated, and the difficulty level is sky high, made even higher by the fact that there are no continues. It doesn’t matter if you’ve played through 75 percent of the game and amassed a fortune in coins; one death strips you of everything.
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