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I enjoy playing rougelikes, and I enjoy playing platforming games. What do you get when you combine the two? You get Spelunky, that's what. This game does not care that you want to survive to the end, it'll find a way to make you taste bitter death with every chance it gets! It's a free PC game that I really like to play every now and again; each time I play it I learn something new; as I do with most punishing roguelikes. Let's start it up and see what's going on.
The guy with the hat is us! We're on a quest to get lots of gold, and cave whores! What are cave whores you might ask? We'll just have to see! Here at the very start, there's a gigantic spider ready to wreck us good. If we go underneath, he'll drop down from the ceiling and really let us have it, and possibly kill us in two hits. Killing him gives us a nice reward however, so let's use some problem solving. We are armed with bombs, that we can use to mainly destroy terrain, but it'll also kill enemies. What we're going to do, is toss a bomb into that spider web above.
Whoops. At first, I pushed the wrong button and threw a rope up. The rope allows us to climb up or down safely, a great boon for our adventures. The next try I toss a bomb up into the web; it's that red orb that's currently caught. Within a few seconds..
Blamo! No more giant spider. He drops an item, some kind of jar with a P on it. This turns our bombs into Sticky Bombs, that'll cling to surfaces. This is really good for dispatching enemies on ceilings, or blowing up ceilings for some rope to go through. There's a smaller spider just below it; rather than engage and possibly take damage, I decide to avoid him by going above.
With the spider avoided, we come across a larger conundrum: We don't know what's down below here. We could jump down, only to fall into spikes, instantly killing us! We don't want that; but this is what the hang is good for: You can scroll the screen down a little so you can see where you're gonna go, and plan accordingly. Turns out that there's no immediate threat, but we still have to be careful, since falling too far will result in damage, or death.
A cave whore was down below, calling for help. These are really damsels (Damsels in distress I suppose), but cave whore's a more fitting name. We'll find out why later on.
If you bring a cave whore to the level exit, she'll give you a kiss, increasing our life by one. It's the only way to restore or increase health in this game, so saving them often is a good idea. Well, often enough when it's convenient; dying over them is usually a waste.
Here in the next floor, is a dice game. It costs a certain amount to roll the dice, and if you win, you get the item shown. We already have the sticky bombs, so we're going to ignore it. Below was a box; and inside is a pitcher's mitt. This allows us to throw things further and deal more damage with thrown objects. Sounds good, right? Normally, I would avoid this item, as it usually always screws me over, but hopefully it won't while we're playing it this time. We'll get the mitt and go about our business; which will be that cliff.
Let's throw a rope down, we don't want to fall and possibly get impaled on some spikes. Roaming around, we come across a pickaxe that we're using to dig at random terrain in order to advance. Then we come across an interesting store:
This is why I call them cave whores. This shopkeeper is charging money for kisses, which we can use as much as we can afford. Now if we were to pick the cave whore up, the shopkeep will flip his shit and shoot us dead with a shotgun. I am not making this up, this will really happen if we even remotely touch this cave whore the wrong way.
Later on, we came across another dice game, and we decided to take a chance. Unfortunately, we forgot we had the pitcher's mitt however.. The dice were thrown way too hard, and it bounced up and hit the shopkeeper, and well..
Yeah.. The shopkeeper gets mad at us for hitting him and blows our brains all over the place. Damn. So ends our adventure. Silly little mistakes like the one we made there is what causes deaths most of the time, but we learned something: Never throw dice so hard against the floor that they come back and hit whoever owns the dice. They just might shoot you dead with a shotgun.
~Kuragari Ryo
Other games played: Kid Icarus: Uprising
I enjoy playing rougelikes, and I enjoy playing platforming games. What do you get when you combine the two? You get Spelunky, that's what. This game does not care that you want to survive to the end, it'll find a way to make you taste bitter death with every chance it gets! It's a free PC game that I really like to play every now and again; each time I play it I learn something new; as I do with most punishing roguelikes. Let's start it up and see what's going on.
The guy with the hat is us! We're on a quest to get lots of gold, and cave whores! What are cave whores you might ask? We'll just have to see! Here at the very start, there's a gigantic spider ready to wreck us good. If we go underneath, he'll drop down from the ceiling and really let us have it, and possibly kill us in two hits. Killing him gives us a nice reward however, so let's use some problem solving. We are armed with bombs, that we can use to mainly destroy terrain, but it'll also kill enemies. What we're going to do, is toss a bomb into that spider web above.
Blamo! No more giant spider. He drops an item, some kind of jar with a P on it. This turns our bombs into Sticky Bombs, that'll cling to surfaces. This is really good for dispatching enemies on ceilings, or blowing up ceilings for some rope to go through. There's a smaller spider just below it; rather than engage and possibly take damage, I decide to avoid him by going above.
With the spider avoided, we come across a larger conundrum: We don't know what's down below here. We could jump down, only to fall into spikes, instantly killing us! We don't want that; but this is what the hang is good for: You can scroll the screen down a little so you can see where you're gonna go, and plan accordingly. Turns out that there's no immediate threat, but we still have to be careful, since falling too far will result in damage, or death.
A cave whore was down below, calling for help. These are really damsels (Damsels in distress I suppose), but cave whore's a more fitting name. We'll find out why later on.
If you bring a cave whore to the level exit, she'll give you a kiss, increasing our life by one. It's the only way to restore or increase health in this game, so saving them often is a good idea. Well, often enough when it's convenient; dying over them is usually a waste.
Here in the next floor, is a dice game. It costs a certain amount to roll the dice, and if you win, you get the item shown. We already have the sticky bombs, so we're going to ignore it. Below was a box; and inside is a pitcher's mitt. This allows us to throw things further and deal more damage with thrown objects. Sounds good, right? Normally, I would avoid this item, as it usually always screws me over, but hopefully it won't while we're playing it this time. We'll get the mitt and go about our business; which will be that cliff.
Let's throw a rope down, we don't want to fall and possibly get impaled on some spikes. Roaming around, we come across a pickaxe that we're using to dig at random terrain in order to advance. Then we come across an interesting store:
This is why I call them cave whores. This shopkeeper is charging money for kisses, which we can use as much as we can afford. Now if we were to pick the cave whore up, the shopkeep will flip his shit and shoot us dead with a shotgun. I am not making this up, this will really happen if we even remotely touch this cave whore the wrong way.
Later on, we came across another dice game, and we decided to take a chance. Unfortunately, we forgot we had the pitcher's mitt however.. The dice were thrown way too hard, and it bounced up and hit the shopkeeper, and well..
Yeah.. The shopkeeper gets mad at us for hitting him and blows our brains all over the place. Damn. So ends our adventure. Silly little mistakes like the one we made there is what causes deaths most of the time, but we learned something: Never throw dice so hard against the floor that they come back and hit whoever owns the dice. They just might shoot you dead with a shotgun.
~Kuragari Ryo
Other games played: Kid Icarus: Uprising
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