Spelunky: Cave Exploration Adventure

Spelunky is a cave exploration roguelike game, where you take control of a brave spelunker and delve into an ancient cave in an attempt to plumb it of it's secrets and treasure. In Spelunky, death is brutal, relentless, unforgiving, hideously fast, and quite common. Every time you start a new game of Spelunky, the cave is randomly generated anew, but with practice you will learn how to survive and collect riches.

What Lies Beneath?

A typical entry cave.

When you first start playing Spelunky, you will probably have no idea what you are doing; as a direct consequence, you will most likely die within 15 seconds. Do not let this discourage you, as it is expected. Each map type has the same kinds of dangers; for instance, the first cave type has snakes, bats, spiders, giant spiders, arrow traps, golden shrines, cave men, spikes, and falling rocks. In addition you might blow yourself up with bombs or throw something at yourself. Also, theft is generally punished quickly and violently by the merchants. As you play (and then die), you will get experience with all of these dangers and learn how to survive them.

How exactly does a rain forest grow so far underground?

You have two goals in Spelunky: collect treasure, and delve deeper into the cave. After you get through five cave levels, you will get to the jungle levels, which will introduce a brand new variety of generally more dangerous threats. You will once again get the opportunity to die many more times while you learn to survive the jungle, and once you delve deep enough into the jungle, you will get to the next type of cave, and so on.

Depth in Simplicity

Although the concept and controls for Spelunky are extremely straightforward, and the basics will be grasped quickly, the randomness and unforgiving nature of the game mean that skill is extremely important in Spelunky. As you play Spelunky, you will develop the skills you need to survive longer and further; or you will die and you will not advance. Spelunky is relentless unforgiving, and that is what makes it so fun - as you advance, you know you are advancing because you are getting better, and that is a great feeling.

If Spelunky sounds fun, you can download it for free here at it's website.