Game Review: Spelunky on Microsoft Windows
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Spelunky is an addictive 12-year-old rogue-like game, created back in 2021 by Derek Yu and subsequently released as freeware for Microsoft Windows under the title of Spelunky. The game quickly became popular amongst indie gaming fans, and ultimately it was considered one of the toproguelists of all time. The game is very much like other rogue games, in that you'll have to solve puzzles whilst fighting through waves of enemies, earning money to buy upgrades for your character, and generally just have fun. There are many different difficulty settings, but as far as I'm concerned, the easiest way to play Spelunky is "basic". That means that you just need to know the basics, learn the controls, jump around a bit and have a lot of fun. However, if you want to get the most out of the game, and master all of its secrets, there's a good bit more to it than that.
As with most roguelikes, you start by picking up the basic weapons and skills, as well as a couple of abilities to use effectively (like the rock pistol and the chain pistol, for example). These weapons are used to defeat enemy characters, before they can do any damage to you, which in turn will grant you points (a score), which you then use to unlock new areas, buy upgrades for your character, or otherwise make the game easier. Spelunky also features a number of hidden treasures and items to find and collect, that will multiply your points so that you can move on to harder levels. The catch is that if you run out of lives, you'll have to restart the level from scratch - which means that the game can get extremely frustrating at times, but is also highly rewarding, when you think about how many stages you can reach based on your score!
The nice thing about Spelunky is that it has a great deal of content that can be replayed multiple times, if you so wish. That means that even if you've played this game once, you still have a great deal of fun left in it, since each level is made even more difficult than the last. However, the new version of Spelunky does have one major drawback: it's not available on Microsoft Windows.
