The Chaotic Game Design of Spelunky
Hallå pals!
Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.
I rediscovered Spelunky 2 recently. Which also got me to return to Spelunky 1 a bit. To me these are nearly perfect games.
Except the art in the first one bothered me a bit..? It just felt a bit too noisy, and Derek have talked about it similarly.
Before the second game was even announced, I thought about how differently the game could have looked. So when I was studying game art back in 2017, I wanted to make a quick mockup. I always thought the cover art of the original Xbox 360 release was so sick. It’s a bit more chibi/cartoony/polished than the actual game.
This is the in-game version of the character, it’s a little grittier than the one from the cover art.
So I made my own take on what the player sprite could look like, inspired by that cover art.
I also tried to make an environment too, but I never ended up finishing it. I think I got a bit stuck, not knowing how to continue. Even though it’s rough, it’s quite fun to look back on now.
Either way, Derek completely nailed the art for Spelunky 2. He exceeded my hopes for the sequel in every way.
What I really want to talk about today though, is the philosophy or design approach to the Spelunky games. It’s something I haven’t quite felt anywhere else, not even in other roguelikes.
The Chaotic Game Design of Spelunky
There’s a chaotic nature to Spelunky which I think other roguelikes fail to capture, or maybe it’s just not in their interest. The roguelikes I want to compare Spelunky to are Hades and The Binding of Isaac. It never feels like those games are chaotic in the same way as Spelunky, and I want to explain why.
Hades and The Binding of Isaac mostly make stuff harder by throwing more enemies on the screen and giving them more HP and faster attacks.
Spelunky doesn’t really do that. Usually there aren’t that many enemies on the screen. Each one of Spelunky’s enemy has a different behaviour and they all have roughly the same amount of HP, usually 1 to 3.
In Hades and The Binding of Isaac you have to kill every enemy in the entire room before you can progress to the next one. In Spelunky all you need to do is find the door to the next level. It’s up to you if you wanna kill every enemy you come across, run past them, find another route or trick them to take each other out.
I admit it’s not completely fair to compare these games since Hades and The Binding of Isaac are combat games while Spelunky is more of an adventure game. But it helps with explaining what I think is so special about Spelunky.
Hades is like a Street Fighter, where you win by depleting the opponents health. While Spelunky is more like Smash Bros, a pinball game where it’s about getting the opponent to fly off the stage.
Also. The items in Spelunky is a big deal. My favorite item, the climbing glove lets you climb walls, the jetpack lets you fly around, the spike shoes make your jump attacks more lethal. These items share no behaviour at all. Every single one of them is unique in some way.
Meanwhile in Hades and The Binding of Isaac, most items are stat boosts to your main attack, they make you feel more powerful, but only have mild consequences on how you actually interact with the game. Pretty much regardless of which upgrades you get you will always be slashing and dashing around.
While each item in Spelunky adds another variable to every situation. It makes each run feel unique, if all I find in a run is a harmless web gun or a camera, I’ll try my best to make use of them, even though they are pretty lame compared to other items. It makes me feel like a clever adventurer and like I did some crazy feet against all odds when I do anything with these items.
It creates these little stories and cool situations that I can remember. This does happen sometimes in The Binding of Isaac, to a very small degree (maybe?). But it never happens in Hades, the systems are just too centered on stat boosts and killing.
I listened to this interview with Derek Yu, the creator of Spelunky. Most designers try to think about making their games feel fair and balanced. But he wants Spelunky to feel chaotic and “spiky.” The spikiness is the difficulty, the uncaringness the game world has towards you. It both pushes you forward (with a timer) and holds you back (with obstacles).
I would love to embrace the chaos and explore this kind of spiky design in whatever genre I end up working in next. Maybe a chaotic farming game? I already have some vague ideas about how I could do that with my artsy side project Ploppy Weather.
I still have some stuff left to figure out about what exactly chaotic means and how to accomplish it. Maybe it’s just about giving players a chaotic situation and letting them solve it? Which both Hades and Spelunky does, but to me they are very different flavors of chaos and maybe that’s the exact flavor I have to figure out for myself?
With all that said though, Spelunky is very well balanced, it’s salty, spicy and sweet.
Mini Notes
🕹️ Browser game - Spelunky Classic HD
Someone put together this browser version of the original Game Maker-Spelunky. It’s no longer maintained but it’s an easy way to dip your toes into Spelunky if you’ve been curious but hesitant about it. I guess the main difference is just the wide screen, but it’s nice that it’s so easy to boot up here. I remember playing this in anticipation of the HD version which came out on Xbox 360 in 2012.
I was surprised by how many small improvements happened for the real Spelunky HD. Because in my memory Spelunky HD and Classic played identically. I’ve also gone back to playing Spelunky HD after only playing Spelunky 2 for years and was surprised in the same way. There are so many tweaks between each game that seem so obvious and like they should have always been there, or like they always were. Like item crates in HD doesn’t cause damage to enemies, but they do in the sequel.
🕹️ Game - Mosa Lina
This is another great example of weird, spiky game design. It’s an “immersive sim” with some similarities to Spelunky, just without the level generation (which is usually the main thing people take from there). So the levels are all premade, but the arsenal of tools you get to solve the problems are completely randomized. Which means there is no guarantee that a problem is actually solvable. It makes every problem a real problem. It pushes you to learn to see possibility in a world where there might be none.
🎨 Art - Spelunky Mod
Rob Laro shared this really cool teaser of a Spelunky mod/reskin he was working on way back in the day. That was part of what also made me want to try making my own mockup.
Panel of the week
(from Space Deer)
Last week I published the 52nd Space Deer comic strip. Which makes it the half year anniversary of the strip! I celebrated that with a full color Sunday-style strip.
Thank you for reading Indie Notebook! I’d love to hear what today’s issue made you think about.
Take care and have a creative week.
You are my opposite in viewing the graphics :). The art in spelunky 2 bothers me! That looks like no jungle to me. Spelunky 2 is too bland; it looks like a warehouse. Spelunky 1 feels like a real, spiky environment.
I read the Bossfight Book by Derek; I liked that the publisher wanted him to make arrow traps in the first area do 1 damage, to scale the difficulty, but he wouldn't budge; it had to be punishing!
Spelunky HD influences my view on games.
I hope you manage what you're looking for with your next game.
I haven't played Spelunky. It seems like such a deep rabbit hole. Once, I watched a speedrun of it, I think. It did look wild and exciting/nerve-racking.
Roguelikes is an interesting topic. My main experience with them has been Binding of Isaac, so it's interesting to read how you think it compares (with more quantitative instead of qualitative upgrades, etc.). I've certainly had a fair share of chaos playing Binding of Isaac, but it might not compare to Spelunky.
The peak of my Isaac-playing experience was when I got a bunch of items that created a perfect storm of me essentially being invincible. I could keep generating health restoring pills and plenty of batteries, as long as my battery-driven pill generator was recharged. Then, the game took me to a different world with crazy bosses in each room and I pretty much cleared them out without a sweat. I was "immortal," so I was just chilling with it... until my hubris exposed my Achilles' heel! Before what might have been the final boss room, I forgot to enter the room with a charged battery. This made my whole invincibility cycle fall apart, and I was finally killed ;,( Yeah, that one hurt. It's hard for me to play it now, 'cause I feel like I will never "catch a wave" like that again. Like you said, it creates a fun memory though...