Spelunky Review (PC).
The high definition upgrade to the much loved randomly generated platformer finally hit the PC on August the 8th, having been available on consoles for a good while now. Bringing with it an exclusive mode and it's usual amount of infuriating anger as you attempt to make your way through the ever more challenging levels. For those unfamiliar with Spelunky, we shall take a quick history level.
Originally released as freeware by designer Derek Yu in 2008, Spelunky is a challenging platformer which features randomly generated levels so no two games are the exact same. Did I mention it's a roguelike to, so once you suffer the cold grips of death's hands you lose everything. This is what makes Spelunky both infuriating and engrossing, like all roguelikes it's all about that one play through, so caution and patience is advised. Spelunky features a specific set of traps, items and enemies per setting, so it's possible to learn all the tricks so you don't go making the same mistakes twice. That said it's all too easy to want to rush forward blindly, which all too often results in you falling upon some unsuspected spikes or shot to death with arrows. Caution and care is the most recommended approach to playing through Spelunky.
It's colorful charming artistic style is almost in contrast to how tough and unforgiving Spelunky can be. Yet it's tough in a way that never feels unfair or attempts to cheat you. Death is almost always caused by your own over eagerness or simple stupidity. Oh and all those traps, spikes and methods of eventual death also affects other creatures in a level, so those sharp nasty spikes are just as likely to kill a spider as they are you. This makes Spelunky feel fair, giving you more reasons to chastise yourself for getting killed for the 50th time because you didn't make the effort to look down to see what was below. This all results in a platformer that continually unveils new surprises along the way, new items to discover and new traps to die violently by.
The Steam release of Spelunky brings along with it an exclusive new mode called the daily challenge. As the name suggests this is a mode where every Spelunky player will face the same set of levels and are judged by how far they can reach and what they can achieve along the way. These daily challenges can only be tackled once so fail at your first attempt and that's all you get. Whilst it's good to see developer Mossmouth add a little something special to the highly anticipated PC release of Spelunky, the mode itself feels a little flat. Your scores are compared to every other Spelunky challenger through leaderboards and that's it. While it's difficult to say how it would've been possible to make this mode more worthwhile, at the end of the day the daily challenges are a nice if somewhat pointless addition to Spelunky on PC.
If you've never experienced the infuriating yet splendid challenge that lies ahead in Spelunky, then I highly recommend you give this a go. At the very least check out the freeware version to see if it's your cup of tea. But if precise, fun and unpredictable platforming is your sort of thing, than you'll find Spelunky an absolute pleasure. It's fair in all the right ways and requires you to learn from your many mistakes. Combined with it's charming visuals and a catchy soundtrack, Spelunky will take up a great deal of your time. Like I said previously, it would have been nice if the daily challenges mode turned out to be something more substantial but there's still a lot to discover, find and kill that makes a purchase of Spelunky more than worthwhile. Whatever platform you choose to purchase it on.
