Game designers love Spelunky. It’s a game that appears quite simple at
first glance but it contains a rich depth that fans find satisfying to explore. It takes a commonplace
genre, 2D platformers, and constructs an experience with
multiple layers of player discovery and emergent gameplay. We explored these aspects
of the game’s design in the first video of our
“Rediscovering Mystery” series, and seeing as this is the
final video in that series, we thought we’d get the band
back together. Derek Yu, Andy Hull and Eirik Suhrke
were responsible for bringing the modern version
of Spelunky to life. But how they did it and the road
they traveled to get to this point is deserving of its own story. So, in this deep dive we’re
not only going to tell you how Spelunky came to be created, but we’re also going
to dive deep into how its various mechanics
interact with one another. Its weapons, enemies,
areas and more. But before all that, well you
know the drill by now, right? It’s time for an Origin Story. I grew up in Pasadena, that’s
in Southern California. I grew up with games. My mom, apparently,
played a lot of Centipede when she was pregnant
with me and then when she got so big that she
had a hard time walking, my dad bought her an Atari 2600
and she played that at home. So, you could say I was kind
of a gamer from the womb. But I did come out and, yeah,
played the Atari 2600, I remember. And I spent a lot of time when I was
a kid just designing games on paper. I’d just draw up the levels and the
characters and things like that. My uncle was the first one to get
a Nintendo Entertainment System. So, I would go over to
his house and play. He bought it for my cousins, they
weren’t that interested in it, but when I played it I was like, “This is incredible, this is
amazing, this is what I want to do.” And so as soon as I could start just
like designing games, I did, basically. And so I tried a little bit of programming
but I didn’t know where to start. I remember making some
text adventures in basic and not really getting
too far with those. And then one day I saw an ad
for Klik & Play in a magazine. And I remember the ad very clearly. It had a mouse and coming out of the mouse
were all kinds of crazy things. There was like a court jester
and a jet plane and a dragon and at the bottom it said
The Revolutionary Instant Game Creator. And I was like, “Mom, please,
you’ve got to get this for me.” And being the supportive parent
that she was she got it, and that kind of changed
everything for me. Have you ever played a computer
game and thought, I could design a better
game than that? Well, here’s your chance
to prove it, with Klik & Play. Klik & Play is a revolutionary new
concept in computer entertainment that taps into the imagination
of its players by supplying them with all the parts
and logic to create their own games. Klik & Play requires no
programming knowledge and comes complete with
over ten varieties of… Klik & Play, it’s a lot like
Game Maker in Unity. It’s an all-in-one package
game-making tool. It’s very visually oriented. It has a built-in
spread editor and things like that. And it just clicked with
me, no pun intended. Immediately, like, all of a sudden,
game-making made sense to me. Because I’m more of an artist
by nature than a programmer. I actually enjoy doing
some programming, but I mostly like doing the logic
of the game itself. So, programming, you know, how is this character going
to move and interact with this item and
things like that. The game engine stuff,
I’m not as interested in. So, Klik & Play was great because
it took all of that away. And there was some programming,
but it was all the logic stuff that I liked. But everything was built into it, you could just draw a character
in the program, you drag it onto the screen,
you tell it what to do, you test it out. And then when you
want to make a game, you just press “Make
Game” and there it is. It made game making and game
development more like drawing for me in the sense that, I have an idea for
a drawing, I can just put it to paper,right? It’s kind of like I can put the idea out
about as fast as I can think of it, and so Clik & Play just
made that interface from my thoughts to the game, very quick. So, what type of games did you make?
What were your like first games? So, the very first game that I made was
called Sasquatch Fight, I believe. It was a one versus
one death match where you each control a Sasquatch. It was side-view in these
like single screen arenas. And you’re just trying to knock
the other Sasquatch into the water. There’s something really sad
about like two Sasquatches which are like, presumably,
quite endangered, if at all they exist,
fighting each other. I know, it’s true, it’s like, you should
be mating or something. But after that I made a game
called Trigger Happy which was also a death match
game but it was top-down. You control little soldiers trying to shoot
the other person and collect items. And that one I actually released and I remember very distinctly uploading
it onto some server, or whatever, on AOL. And right after I put that up I started
getting emails from people saying, “Hey, this really cool. Do you
have more? I really like, you know, what you’re doing here.”
Even thought it was this very simple game. But getting that feedback from people,
you know, you can imagine being a kid and spending all this time dong
these little sprites in Klik & Play and then uploading it and
then instantaneously people are playing the game and giving
you feedback. It was just huge. So, that really started
me on my career and I think of that as kind of
my first big game. The Klik & Play community was growing. It supported an entire
ecosystem of design. Designers were teaming up to make studios
like online (inaudible) clubs, sites like The Daily Click would
spread the news of the day and The World Bulletin Board
was crammed full of designers posting their games for
public consumption. An insular community playing
each other’s games, giving feedback, writing reviews and
finding inspiration for the next project. If the modern indie scene
could be traced back it would be to communities like this. And it was here that
Derek ran into Andy. So, my name is Andy Hull. I’m Programmer on Spelunky. So, I started making games back
in middle school, actually with a program called Klik & Play. So, it was a really exciting time
and I just remember every summer it was like everybody else was excited
that they could like go swimming or like go on vacation. And I was like, I have three months
of game development time, it’s going to be amazing. Do you remember each
other’s user names? I do, yeah. I was just Derek, I think. At the time I didn’t really
have a handle. He was Astrospoon. He had a game that he made
called Astro Spoon and it was a lot like Mega Man,
except instead of robot masters they were spoons. Like, different types of spoons. I can only name like three
different types of spoons. Like, ladle… - Right.
- Teaspoon… Well, I think they were
pretty special spoons. It was basically Mega Man. I mean,
it was a Mega Man knock-off and you played as Astro Spoon
but there were other spoons like, Twin Spoon
and Ninja Spoon, and you went to their levels
and you had to beat them. And you would get their weapons
and a lot of the sound effects were just straight up
from Mega Man game. It’s like, I was not trying, you know.
But I mean, it was learning, right, you’re a kid, you’re
mashing stuff up, you’re just like figuring out what works. Like, I get the compulsion to make
a Mega Man clone, but why spoons? That is a really good question that I still don’t think
I know the answer to because there was literally
no spoons in the game. Nothing in the game was a spoon. There was nothing really… there
was no reason to call it that. So, and I thought it was
funny as a kid, I think. What did Astro Spoon look like? So, he looked like Mega Man, amazingly enough, except
he was wearing red, he had blue hair, he
didn’t have a helmet on, and he wore like, kind of like goggles,
like engineering goggles on his forehead. And that was pretty
much his design. - Cool.
- Yeah. All these young
designers grew up, Klik & Play was re-branded
as Multimedia Fusion and the games they created evolved
from clones of existing titles to fully fledged games. Derek teamed up with a friend
from his home town John Perry to make a side-scrolling
platformer, Eternal Daughter. Development of this game
dragged on for two years as both men graduated
high school and went to their
separate colleges. Derek finished the game while studying
computer science at Berkeley. I started to feel really
down at the time because I wasn’t working
with John anymore. After Eternal Daughter, he kind of
did his own thing at university. And I didn’t really have anyone
to make games with and I was just completely
burned out from school. And I was feeling very dim about my prospects being a game
developer professionally. Yeah, like I wasn’t doing
good at school either. My grades weren’t that hot and I was just getting sick because I was
so stressed out and had no sleep. So, it was a very low point
I think for me at the time and I decided that I wasn’t
going to do games and I was actually going to focus more
on my art and maybe do comic books. Yeah, I was actually
a wooden toy designer for the first five years out of college. So I made wooden toys mostly
for like three to five year olds. A lot of wooden food sets,
so I did a sushi set, a grill set, I did a pirate set,
a mailbox, stuff like that. So, it was really actually quite good because I was really burned out
on programming after college and it felt like, oh, I really
could just get to do art stuff. Very relaxing a lot of times at
work, just very creative work. And also, just the iteration and
making like a saleable product and just learning all about like packaging
and graphic design especially. The art director there was fantastic and really taught me the ins
and outs of graphic design, which then when I went
back to games, was like a huge help in terms of like
print material, but like menus, title screens and stuff like that. And so, after college I moved to San Francisco
and just did freelance artwork and I did do some like game
concept art and stuff. But it was pretty funny because a lot of the contract
work I did was for mobile games and I think I worked on like a SpongeBob
SquarePants game and stuff. But, you know, you just have
to pay the bills at that point. Derek was drifting,
doing freelance art while keeping in touch with his friends
from the old Klik & Play days. He spent his time creating
art while running TIGSource, one of the largest indie game
communities on the internet. And in an era before the
indie scene blew up Derek wasn’t hopeful about
making games for a living. But then Jack Thompson got involved… Jack Thompson, for those
that don’t remember, was the notorious lawyer who was trying to take video games
down for being too violent. And he was associating them
with all kinds of terrible things like shootings and stuff like that. It is kind of funny now
that I think about it because in a lot of ways I have to give
him some credit for getting me started because he issued this “Modest
Proposal”, he called it. He kind of dared someone to make
a game where you kill game developers. So, in his mind game developers are
making games where you kill other people and it’s leading to mass murder
and hysteria in the streets. And so, well, would you dare put
yourself in a game to get killed and see how you like it, right? I mean, it was so ridiculous. But he actually put up some kind of
cash reward or something for it, like, he was going to give $10,000
to charity if anyone did this. And I didn’t have
anything better to do. So, I got some of my friends on
my own personal message board to help me just make that game. And so we were working on
this and somehow it got out and Alec Holowka, who
I made Aquaria with, found out about the project
and actually emailed me to ask if he could
help with this game. And he did, he did I think some of
the music and programming for it. Alec and I kind of exchanged ideas and
he told me about some of his game ideas. We could tell right off the bat that we had a sort of similar
drive to do this stuff. And so, once this
project was done, Alec and I just decided that we would
work on something together. - Did you get the money?
- No. - Did he give it to charity?
- No, he didn’t. What a piece of shit. Yeah, no. It was pretty scummy. And it was really
perverse actually. So, I’m imagining, I mean, he
spent the time to sit there and type up just all this
really perverse stuff. Like, there is a part in
the game, in I’m O.K, where you kill somebody and
then their brains come out and then you have
to pee on them. I didn’t come up with that. That was in Jack Thompson’s
design document and I like did it
according to that. So, I mean, in a way I was just making
his game but he never ponied up. Jack Thompson didn’t pay up but
Derek had struck gold regardless. He found his new creative
partner in Alec Holowka. For the next two years they would work remotely on another
side-scrolling platformer. But this one would change
Derek’s life forever. The idea was based off of a
prototype that Alec made where you’re just controlling
this little mermaid and she swims around this library. And I just really loved the controls, just the way it felt moving
around with the mouse. And I liked the underwater theme. I loved that part but there
wasn’t a game there, right? Like we had to figure
out the whole story and at a certain point it was a JRPG
with these big bustling towns and there are all these cut scenes. And then we had to pare it down to what it ended up being which
is more of like a lonely game where it focuses more
on the main character. And eventually it ended up being I think a really good mirror into the way
we felt working on the game, which was kind of lonely in a way, just separated for most of
the time working on this. Aquaria was our first commercial project.
It was very hard. It took use two years, we worked
pretty much non-stop. And it was just a very difficult
development for a lot of reasons. One, because it was our
first commercial game. Two, because Alec and I didn’t know
each other personally like super well, so we’re kind of getting to know
each other and our work habits and I think we just had different
ways of doing things, and we had to kind of come
to terms with that while we were working on
this big stressful project. All that hard work paid off as Derek and Alec’s
game was nominated for four awards at the then fledgling Independent
Games Festival. I actually remember watching this stream on Game Spot
from my bedroom in Ireland back in 2007. It was a hell of a show. Andy Schatz hosted
in a ridiculous three-piece suit. One winner proposed, successfully. And Cryptic Sea
gave perhaps my favorite awards speech of all time. I just want to read one of my favorite
passages out of the Dianetics. Persons, as they live forward from
childhood, suffer loss after loss, and each loss takes from them
a little more of this quantity. Thank you. And in the audience that day, Derek and Alec sat,
as the first three nominations went by without a win. It was crazy how the mood
just dropped at our table. I mean, I’m there with my now
wife and my family and Alec’s family and his girlfriend.
- Were your parents there as well? Yeah, my parents were there.
They came out. And it’s just like... And so, I remember looking over at Alec
and I think his was just on the table I think my head was probably
on the table too. And it was just so somber.
And then they… And the IGF Seumas McNally Grand Prize
winner for 2007 is Aquaria. Yeah, this is an incredible honor. I’d like
to thank my parents, first and foremost, because they’ve supported me my entire life and, you know, they let me buy a lot of video
games, and that’s nice. And, um… And um… Oh my God, this is
a terrible speech, but it’s a great honor and we’re happy
to be here. Thank you very much. So I remember actually very clearly,
I was sitting at my desk and I found out that Derek had won the IGF with Aquaria. And I’m still in touch with Derek and it just lit that
fire in me like, oh, I really need to get back to games. Like, if Derek can do it, I can do it.
Like, this’ll be good, I’ll get back to it. The expectation was that we would, after a successful
release like Aquaria, that we would do another one. Maybe even a sequel to Aquaria or something
like that, but I just couldn’t do it. I really felt like I needed to be alone at that point but I didn’t want Alec to have to wait for me
to kind of get mentally ready to work again. So, yeah, we kind of went
our separate ways at that point. And so, I went from this big commercial game development,
that was really awesome in so many ways, but after that I was pining for those Klik & Play
days where, in comparison, it was so carefree. No pressure to make a commercial game and worry about
whether people are going to like it and pay money for it. And so I picked up Game Maker, yeah,
it totally reminded me of Klik & Play. Derek wasn’t a programmer He enjoyed game design but building
engines was beyond him. In Game Maker he found his natural
evolution from Klik & Play, while working solo allowed him to move
the project along at his own pace. Like most novices, he learned Game Maker
by working on 2D platform tutorials. He then came up with an idea for making a roguelike,
and it wasn’t long until the two ideas collided. I think the first thing was figuring out
how roguelikes and platformers were going to fit together because
they’re two very different genres. And what I realized was,
with roguelikes, what interests me is not that
they’re top-down dungeon crawlers, turn base, that part just really, to me,
didn’t hold the essence of them. To me, it was much more high concept. You know, there was the randomness of course but there’s
also the permadeath and the consequences of that because you know if you die,
like that’s it. And then the third thing was just
that everything in most of the... like (inaudible) and roguelikes, everything in the game kind of
shares a similar physicality, right? If there’s like a potion on the ground,
you can kick it. If there’s a monster,
you can kick it. You can pick up a monster’s corpse. You can pick up a potion.
You can throw them both. So you can like pick up a potion, throw it at
a monster, you don’t have to just drink the potion. So that was very novel and I think
all of those things together led to a type of game that was
very emergent in design. So you get all these kind of crazy scenarios
that come up because of how everything sort of shares the same
physical nature fundamentally. And you also have to think really
hard about what you’re going to do. Yeah, that was really the essence of
roguelikes that I liked and I realized that none of that has to do with
top-down dungeon crawling. Like, that’s all stuff that could be
applied to other genres and also existed in other genres
in smaller amounts. I think a friend sent me a link and
said, “Look what Derek Yu is doing. Someone put Game Maker in Derek Yu’s
hands and this is what happens essentially.” I was like, I booted Spelunky up and instantly it
reminded me of a couple of my favorite games. It reminded me of La-Mulana,
and it reminded of Castlevania. And I was like, “Okay, this is sweet.” And then I died, and I died like five more times and I
put it down and I was like, “No, I don’t know about this.” And then like a month later, the same friend like
told me, “Okay, you should get a little bit more time.” And then I picked it up again and then it
sunk in a little bit more and I really loved it. Yeah, I released the first version
of Spelunky Classic just on a private sub-forum of the TIGSource forums, this is a place for like high level members of
the forum and moderators to hang out and chat. And I released it there because I
knew it would be like a small pool of pretty dedicated and savvy players. And it was great, yeah,
getting immediate feedback and watching people in real time
explore the game and, you know, find out the kind of
early secrets of the game. Seeing like the big spider for the first time or opening
a treasure chest and having a bomb come out, that kind of stuff. And so, it ended up being this really
awesome positive feedback loop where I really wanted to work on the game,
then I’d just add a bunch of stuff, throw it out, they’d discover it, I’d add more, throw it out. At the time I kind of felt like that I might be
on to something cool, but I wasn’t sure, because I’d just been working
on it myself for so long. And so I really wanted to have
other people experience it. It was also this feeling that, you know, at some
point someone might kind of figure out this mix before me and get it out to…
Yeah, you have to do it now. Yeah, and so I kind of wanted to
put it out and plant that flag in a way. After, you know, it wasn’t too long after that first
private beta version that I put out a public version. And then from there it just kind of snowballed. So, people just started talking
about it on different forums and I remember reading blog
posts about Spelunky. People writing really nice things about it. And then I don’t think it was too long, maybe a month
or two out, I got an email from Jonathan Blow and he was having some kind of graphical
glitch with the freeware version of Spelunky and so we started talking
about Spelunky through that. Kind of at the end of that thread he said,
“You know, I really like this game. Are you interested in putting it out on consoles?
I could put you in touch with my producer.” And I was like, “Wow!” You know, this is Jon Blow
and he had recently put Braid out on Microsoft and it was doing really well. And so I said, “Yeah, sure.” Especially because at the time being on console
was a big thing for indie game developers. And Braid, Castle Crashers, World of Goo,
all those games came out on console and they’d all just done so well. So it felt like this is Shangri-La
for indie game developers. And so to be able to get my foot in the door with Jon,
yeah, it was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. So, actually while I was talking to Microsoft
and signing contracts and things like that, they’re asking me, “Well, how
are you going to get this done?” And I said, “I’m going to find somebody. And if I don’t
find somebody I’ll just do the programming myself.” I couldn’t have done it myself but at the time
it was so important just to get that deal going and make this project happen, that I just
said I would basically do whatever I needed to do to get it done and
talked with a lot of confidence. I actually did ask Jon Blow if he
wanted to do the programming and he declined because
he had his own projects. And this whole time actually
I was talking to Andy, because we’d been friends since
the Klik & Play community, and I was like, “Yeah, you know,
I’ve got this X-Box version of Spelunky and I’m like looking for someone to do the
programming but, you know, Jon’s busy and this other person’s busy and I think I’m just
going to end up doing the programming myself.” So, I kind of realized I wanted to
get back to computer stuff really and I kind of felt like I had to leverage
what I had learned at the toy company. So, originally I had left and started
my own company called Story Fort and I made an interactive children’s
book called, “What is bothering Carl?” And it was about like a cyclops and he’s
got a problem. I don’t want to spoil it for you. Like I mean, but there’s something
wrong and he’s got to fix it. And that actually was in the PAX 10. So, when I went to the PAX 10 actually, Derek
was speaking just in one of the panels there about TIGSource, the website
that he was running. So, that was like the first time in a while that
we’d gotten to see each other so we met up and hung out and talked through the whole
show. I mean, we had a really good time. And that’s when he broke the news to me, like, “Oh hey,
you know, I’m going to be doing this game for Microsoft, like, Spelunky.” And I was like, I mean, I had known
about the game when he was working on it so I was like, “That’s awesome, right?” At a certain point, Andy just asked me straight up, like,
“Hey, you know, could I do the programming for you?” And I was really surprised, because I just
hadn’t considered Andy for whatever reason. I don’t know, it was just kind of
like that girl next door that you’re like great friends
with since childhood and you’re like telling them about
your relationship troubles. And they’re like, “Oh, you know,
everything’s going to be fine.” And then all of a sudden it’s like,
“Wait a second, it was you all along.” Part of it is wanting to work with Derek because
we’ve been friends, I mean, years and years and we’ve never really collaborated. So that was definitely part of it. And I think the other
part of it was just, you know, I liked the game, like I had fun with it. And to be honest, like, “What is bothering Carl?”
was not like a commercial success. To be helping Derek on something
that seemed like it had like a direction, and also that I felt like I really did have
the skills that were required to help him, I just felt like this will be a fun adventure. Like, but I did not know like how kind of
important Spelunky already was at that point. So, I fly out and we go to the Independent
Games Summit and I sit down next to Derek and like, first day of talks, and it’s like,
talk after talk after talk, they’re just using Spelunky as an example.
And this is like the freeware version. And I was like, oh no, like,
what have I gotten myself into? Because like to me, I was like, oh, we’re going to make
this fun little game, like you know, it’s not a big deal. And that was like the first moment when
I realized like, one, Derek was a big deal, and two, Spelunky was a big deal. And I was just, yeah, from then on it
was just like, don’t mess this up, right? Like, people are watching this actually. And with Eirik… Eirik had actually asked if he
could do some music for Spelunky Classic but I already had musicians at the time. I was running this netlabel called Pause
and we were putting out chiptune music and we wanted to bridge the gap
between indie games and chiptunes. Those were completely different scenes
at the time which seems really weird now. But we started putting out indie
game soundtracks on our label, so I emailed Derek about that so he
could post the news on TIGSource. And I guess that’s how
we started talking. And then I said, “Oh, I like Spelunky, it’s cool. Hit me up if you need some
music at some point.” And then, again, when they announced
they were making a remake I was like, “Hey, do you have
anyone on board for this yet?” And he said, “No,” and then
that’s how it happened. You start to build this collection
of little pieces in the game and you’re putting a puzzle
together in a lot of ways. So, you’re connecting pieces and then like
all these other pieces kind of sitting out and you’re kind of looking at them all at once
and just some stand out more than others. I mean, it can be very
superficial stuff just like, it would be cool in the jungle to have
a monkey because it’s a jungle monkey. Like, a lot of things can just start
off that sort of simple. Like, it’s almost juvenile, right?
Like, monkeys in the jungle. But then, you also have to connect
it to the gameplay, like, okay, how is the monkey
actually going to interact? Because, if the monkey just does s
omething that some other monster does or it doesn’t really fit the gameplay somehow,
then there’s no reason to put it in. At least for Spelunky my aim was to have all
these little pieces have a very very simple and just easy to understand personality. And then have those come together
and create complexity. Yeah, I was inspired by games
like Pac-Man with the ghosts. So, in Pac-Man you’ve got the four ghosts
and they have their own personalities, and everyone associates, you know, the red one
is, I think it’s like, wrath and it’s very aggressive and you’ve got the dumb one
that moves around randomly and you’ve got the one that like kind of tries
to cut you off, it’s the sneaky ambush ghost. So the underlying intelligence for
those ghosts is very very simple. But when they come together it
feels like this co-ordinated attack. And so, everything in Spelunky was
designed with a similar sensibility. We’re trying to draw out the personality
of each area, of each monster, just from very very simple actions
and things that they do. And when they all come together, yeah,
you get this complexity that’s very interesting, and that makes every time you play in
this randomized environment, fun, right? Because you start to see over time
just all the different patterns that can arise from just having frogs
that just hop around. And you know, the piranha
just kind of swims back and forth and when you jump
in the water it eats you. But when you put all those together,
yeah, it’s very interesting and they start to work
together in different ways. That’s the emergent gameplay
that comes out of it. Spelunky is a game about mechanics
interacting with one another. It’s about the players coming to understand
the language of this world and emerging gameplay that comes
from playing with its vocabulary. To adequately speak to the broad
design philosophy of the game, we must now dive into its specifics. Into the mechanics, creatures
and weapons that create Spelunky. We could start anywhere,
on the fire frogs for instance, or the ice ray, or the damsels, but how about
we start where most players do, dying over and over and over. Yeah, I mean,
it comes down to consequences. Death has to be swift and so I give
the player four lives, they go so quickly. Like, the arrow in the first
area takes off two. So it already just halves your life. And I remember having a conversation
with Edmund McMillen, I remember him telling me like, “You’ve got to make the arrows
just do one point a day, I mean, it’s too much. Just too brutal.” Right? I was very insistent
that it takes off two. Because when things do that much damage
then you think a lot more about what you’re going to do
and about not hitting them. And same with getting life back, it’s got to be very difficult
to get that life back. If you’re just constantly
regenerating that kind of takes away a lot of the point, right? Like, I may as well just
start you with 100 health. So, yeah, that’s where
the damsel came in. I didn’t want a health item
that you just touch because it was too easy,
it didn’t fit in with Spelunky’s philosophy of just being able to interact things
with picking them up and, yeah, like picking things up
and being able to like hold one thing in your hand at a time. And so, having to swap between
one item and another all the time, it’s part
of that decision making. Like, I had to pick between this item or
this item, which one am I going to carry? You can’t just hold 50 things
in your backpack at once. And so the damsel just seemed
to fit really well into that and it’s a common theme in like Indiana Jones movies,
like I thought a lot about Temple of Doom with Willie Scott, she’s like constantly screaming
and you’ve got to like go and rescue her
and things like that and, yeah. It also being sort of a clumsy entity, right? Like, you’re talking about
the bombs bouncing around and the damsel’s walking back
and forth and running off ledges and you’ve got to like kind of find a safe
place to put her and things like that. Yeah, this expectation
that you’re going to die, I think it can be a surprise for people, especially for new players,
people who don’t play a lot of video games. I mean, the thought of dying, I guess,
even virtually, seems really bad. And so one of the things I wanted
to do with Spelunky was to make it feel okay to die. And that’s built a little bit into
just the humor of the game. You die and it’s funny when
that happens, you know, it’s supposed to be
a little more lighthearted. I just want to make dying feel like
a part of every day life in Spelunky. You should feel free to experiment
and not feel too bad about dying. Actually, like my favorite thing
in the game is the freeze ray. And one of my favorite
things about it is that when you freeze like an enemy and
they fall into water and they’re frozen, they actually float
because it’s like an ice cube. And that was like one of those things
where like I was playing it and like where you freeze a guy and the first things
that happens if you freeze them and they fall if they’re in the air
but they would fall through the water as if there was no water there
and they would just shatter. And I was like, well,
that doesn’t make any sense. I actually had made it so that the trees
in the jungle when you blew them up, like the leaves kind of float down
and they land on top of the water and then they kind of like bob with
the water as the water gets displaced. And so then it kind of hit me like, oh, rather than have the ice
just like gently kind of fall to the bottom, like, what if it like did the leaf thing, what if it kind of floated
on top like it was in a drink? And that was like really cool,
I thought, oh that’s great. So I was like,
it’s those little touches like that, that I was always looking to add. It was obvious to me that like wherever
we could maximize that, like we had to. And so like I always tried to code
things in a way that would like allow for those interactions
to happen too, right? Which if you get too specific
with certain things, that’s not going to work
with other things. So it was always like, how can I do this
in a way that’s kind of like generic enough that maybe some other unforeseen thing
could do the same thing to it essentially. I really like the whip, which for some reason is also
one of the first things that stood out to me. I guess it reminded me of La-Mulano, how you can whip behind
your head and everything. Did you know about the back swing? Yeah, that was on purpose. I mean the whip,
the whip I wanted it to feel very, just heavy in a way, like you throw it back,
you throw it forward. I purposefully designed that to be
fairly awkward and ungainly in a way, because you do go back,
you go forward, there’s not like an instantaneous
forward hit. I do really like boomerangs,
but it just feels like the whip is the one thing
I can control to some extent. One item that I really just enjoy using
in the game is the pitcher’s mitt. It’s just getting to pick up
something and just hurl it like straight across
the screen, I really like. I really like the camera too
because it just has those like, it’s that thing, it’s like,
oh it kills like bats and vampires, and that kind of makes sense.
You’re like, oh, that makes sense. And the camera also like
freezes the ghost and has those special animations tied to it,
so that was really fun. And I remember like getting
the flash working and everything so that the screen flashed
and just feeling like, oh, this feels really new
and neat, right? It felt like when it went in the game
there was like nothing close to this. You know, as opposed to like something like
the boomerang, which I like, it’s fine, but like it didn’t feel like
super special when you picked it up. So it was always fun for me
to do the items that were like, oh yeah, like this is going to be… this is like something that changes
how you play the game like completely. Whereas the boomerang, it’s like,
okay it’s a rock that comes back to you, right? Like essentially like
that’s what it is, right? So, it’s less exciting
to like play around with. There’s like less excitement with it. Yeah, I think it just
comes back to that sort of clumsy kind of feel
that I wanted to give the player. Ultimately, what you can do is you can
lay a bomb down right in front of you and then you can pick up the bomb
and you can hurl it. And if you do it that way you have
a little more control over it, I feel like. And more advanced
Spelunky players will use that and they’ll time the
bomb explosion so that so that you can blow up the exact spot
that you want on the wall. Yeah, initially it’s very clumsy and for me, you know,
it’s all about giving the player these different layers of ways
to interact with things. And to give just the player a lot of choice
about how they want to do things. But it’s also just about,
yeah, it being okay to die. You know, you chuck a bomb,
you blow yourself up, like it’s funny, right? And that’s fine and you try again. So, I do feel like eventually you can
get a lot of control over the bomb but initially, yeah,
it’s going to be hard. These connections just come up, right?
Like, you have the sticky bombs, well, where are you going to get
the stickiness from or paste? And what would make sense to drop paste?
Well, spiders kind of, right? It’s just like all these
fun little connections. The golden monkey pooping jewels is actually
a throw back to the Klik & Play days. That’s actually a character
of Andy’s from Klik & Play. So, he has his Astro Spoon game
that he released back then, but he also did a demo for a game
called Golden Monkey Strike, where you play a gold monkey. The pooping gold part was just,
you know, a bit of juvinalia
that I thought would be funny. Because we had to give the monkey
something that it did that was helpful. So, even with the Spelunky
freeware version I kind of knew that this
was a little wrong in a way. It does fit in the sense that there are a lot of things
in Spelunky that are wrong, right? Like just the fact that you’re an explorer
and you’re kind of blowing up these caves
that should really be in a museum. You know, they should really be
just fenced off and people are getting
guided tours through them. And you’re just chucking bombs
and destroying these priceless artifacts. If you think about it like that.
And just the dark humor, you know, hitting the spikes, sliding down. So, in that sense it worked, right? Having a damsel in distress
that could fall into spikes and, you know, getting the kiss
from her at the and, and having her be kind of throwaway. It did fit, but I also knew like that
that kind of wrongness, I guess, it just wasn’t something
that I was totally satisfied with, with the freeware version. And I think at the very end
of the Spelunky Classic development, when it became 1.0, at the very end
I made it so you could play as the damsel. If you go into the changing room,
which you can unlock, that’s kind of like my
hot fix for that, in a way. But it just wasn’t that satisfying. Yeah, after the Classic had been out
for a while a lot of the feedback about the damsel was about it
being sort of sexist, right? About the damsel being
a literal object, right? A health box, you know? She could have just been like a pot roast
or something like that. I understood the criticism for sure. Because I’d kind of thought about it myself. And the way I am about criticism with
my games, is I take it very seriously. All kinds. If you’re talking about the gameplay, the controls, you know, the controls
don’t feel right to me. I take that seriously, of course.
I think most game developers would. Or, I just don’t like this item, it’s not balanced, right? And so when people come to me
and they say, you know, the representation in the game
is just not quite right, like, this just makes me feel a little awkward. I take that seriously too.
I try not to take it as an affront. Like, “Oh, you’re saying that I’m sexist? I wasn’t intending…
I wasn’t trying to be sexist.” Right? No, I just, I take it like I take any
criticism and I evaluate it and I feel like if it makes sense then I’ll try
to take strides to improve it. That’s really why with
Spelunky and XBLA I didn’t feel like it was right
to take the damsel out. It’s a remake and, you know, she was like a character
in the game and I felt like to take her out would've been to do a bit
disservice to her also. So for me it was more about
evening the play field with the hunk and then the pug. And so that, to me, felt like
a way where I could do things right but it was
sort of a win win because, you know, people could also just
pick the gender of the person that they wanted to get kissed by too, right? So, it’s just much more inclusive and
I didn’t take it as any kind of affront to me that people brought it up. I knew that the people
who were criticizing the damsel in Spelunky Classic, I knew
that they weren’t saying that I was scum or anything
like that, you know? Why the dog? Because you could have fixed the problem
by just putting the hunk in. But you put the pug in as well. Yeah well, I felt like maybe there are people that just... they don’t want to get
kissed by any person, and they would rather just
get licked by an animal. I think my favorite thing,
and this is so sad, my wife gives about this all the time, I think my favorite thing
in all of Spelunky is the animation on the dog
is like hilarious. Because it’s like,
the way his legs move, and the speed he’s going,
are not consistent, so he just looks like this slow
motion kind of like thing, yeah. I’m not even sure if that’s a question,
I just wanted you to know that. The bats, I mean, honestly, I think when I first put them in,
I probably didn’t think about it too hard. They sit there and when you get
close they fly towards you. In practice that ends up
being very tricky. Just having something come
at you from the air. You know, it’s just an awkward
angle because you can only attack forward
and kind of like back and up a little bit
with the back swing. Yeah, they just felt like they would
be this very passive creature. I don’t know, when I think Sasquatch,
even though I made Sasquatch fight before, to me a Sasquatch would just be
the chillest creature in the world and the reason why you can’t
find them is they’re just chilling in a cave somewhere
in the mountains. And so I thought it would be funny
if you happened to run into them, they’ll chuck you, but you don’t even know
whether they’re chucking you maliciously or if they’re just trying to give you a hug and
they screwed up, you know what I mean? The Mantrap is bright red for one thing,
which, nothing else in the game, as far as I know, is like that red. I mean, I guess there is
that hawk-headed guy. But for the most part, like,
you know, you get there, you’re in a mostly just green and brown
area and then there’s that bright red there. And then in the X-Box version I did
try to telegraph it a little more, the Mantrap will kind of snap
its mouth open a bit. And I tried to aim that up so it was like,
you know, don’t jump on top of me. But yeah, I think it’s fine that people
just get eaten by it once. The game is so short
that if you die it doesn’t feel like as much as a setback as
if the game took, you know, hours to beat. The Fire Frogs I really like, just because
of their interaction with the water. Like and they have this kind of like unique
environmental thing going on with them. Actually, I like the Black Knight,
because he’s got that shield and like when you first meet him
you’re like, what is this guy? Like I don’t even understand. But like, there’s this moment of
like you have to learn about him and he’s so unique that it like
takes you back for a second. And I remember like the first
time I went in there, I was like, what is even his area, right? Like you find it under a tomb
and I’m like, what? Because I had found it without
Derek really telling me that like he had put it in the game. So I like went in there and I was like,
what is this place, like, what are you doing in here? And there was a lot of that where I was like,
Derek would like half implements. I’m like, I have no idea what’s going on,
like can you please explain. The third area of the ice caves, it is the third
area so it comes after the jungle. And the jungle, most people feel
like is the most brutal area in the game, relative to
when you get there. It’s just this huge wall of difficulty
when you first get there. I mean, by that point people have already
probably struggled through the mines and they get there and they’re
just kind of smashed because there’s so much going on. There’s things coming
at you from all sides. You’ve got the Tiki Traps where the spears
shoot out suddenly and deals two damage. It’s just a really tough place. So, after that I wanted to give
the player a bit of a breather and introduce an area
that was challenging, less so for just pure twitch but
more because it’s so different. And part of the reason why I put
Yetis and Aliens in that area is because they’re sort of strange
creatures yet they’re kind of mythological and hidden in a way. So it just felt like it made sense
in that area to put these sort of incongruous things because the area itself was designed to be a bit
of an anomaly from the rest of the game. It’s a breather stage. It’s the only stage that has
a giant pit at the bottom. Yeah, it’s almost a bit
of negative space. Yeah. Trying to jump over as opposed to… Exactly, instead of having that path from the entrance to the exit it’s just like these
ions that are floating around everywhere. The one I’m like most proud of that
I thought was really fun is the Worm. Well, it was like, okay, first like,
getting into the worm, was like an exciting like challenge. I was like, how are we going
to work this like worm tongue and the worm has to come out and
eat you, so I managed to solve that. And then I was talking about the
art and we were looking at it and I was like, yeah, this really needs to
like move or jiggle or something, right, like you can’t just be like tiles right,
because it’s alive, like it needs to feel like it’s alive. And kind of solving the challenge
of like how can I make the whole level kind of like jiggle and
stuff and interact with you, like while you’re running around,
was like really fun. And it was also like really brain burning because it was like kind of a technical challenge
to like animate that much on the X-Box. Like I was running into a lot of
framework problems in the worm. Because also it’s like really tall,
like the level’s huge compared to some of the other
levels in the game and so to be able to have like the
interaction all the way through and like constantly animating
and on the game and also look good, it was like okay,
that’s the kind of thing I like really get into. So I was just like, I probably stayed up
like one whole night just crunching on that,
like getting it working, yeah. There’s still one thing. So, I had this cool idea for like, so there’s the random level feelings
where you like go into a level and like there’s something
special about like that one. Right? So, there’s a lake at
the bottom of the jungle there’s a UFO that’s like
inside the ice cave. Oh, this is a special event. So, I wanted to do the flooded mines, so like in the first area you would
just load up like an underwater, like it would just be underwater
all of a sudden and it was like fish swimming around and you would have to like, you know,
it would use kind of the same formations but like everything would be different
because it’s suddenly you can like get up to a higher places
really easily and things. And like it’s in the code, there’s like,
you know, code bits and fragments of the flooded mines, but it was one of those things where like
Derek was never too like keen on the idea and I was kind of like just working
on it in the background and maybe maybe if I show him it, and it’s like,
I’m done, he’ll be like, “Awesome.” And then like I ran out of time
and it was kind buggy and there were like, you know, issues
that would need to be solved with it from a technical standpoint too,
and it just like never materialized. And I’m always like, oh, the flooded mines,
that’s like the one that got away. The destructive terrain was actually
a big part of Spelunky. It’s kind of one of the key things and it did exist to a certain degree, actually quite a bit in roguelikes, like you could break the wall with a pickaxe
and net hack for example. And yeah, that was actually
a key element for Spelunky, was letting you destroy the terrain, because, one, it makes the level generation
a little easier because, you know, you have that option of kind of
blowing away your own path through the level. And so in Spelunky the way
the levels are generated there’s kind of one path from the
entrance to the exit that you know you’re going to be able to get through without
having to use bombs or anything like that. But then the rest, you know,
you can have closed off rooms and it doesn’t matter because the player
can choose to use bombs to get in there. And so that was kind of
the framework, mechanically, of what I wanted Spelunky to be like. Part of the deal with that
is that whole thing about everything in the game is sort of
sharing the same properties. So in co-op, for example, when faced with the decision
of either letting the player hurt the other player or not is so easy, right? Like of course you’re going to be able
to whip your friend or shoot your friend with a shot gun. So it's just... that’s like what
I was talking about before, these decisions just make… they either just make complete sense
right away or you just discard them. It’s kind of like when you
throw a stone or a rock and it bounces off the wall
and hits you back in the face. Yeah, exactly. That’s just the wall you built. Totally. Or it’s like, if a rock falls on
one of those springs in the ice caves and it just bounces up and down
and then you walk into it and the rock hits you and
you get knocked over. That’s not planned at all, it’s just what
emerged out of designing everything to kind of share qualities like that. We were talking about doing some
kind of procedural music, right, or have it work in some
kind of systemic way but that doesn’t lend itself very well
to writing melodically driven music. Really, Eirik and I, as far as the overall
philosophy of the music went, I think we just kind of talked about it. It wasn’t me giving him direction and
then him working with it too much. I think it was more just
like a collaboration and we just had a discussion about what
is Spelunky really like and, you know, I asked him or he just told me
what Spelunky felt like to him. So, I felt very strongly that Spelunky, even though the new one had
HD hand- drawn graphics, still like blocky tiles and still very
mechanically focused a video game. So I felt like the music
should mirror that. And then I kind of told him
what Spelunky was to me and then yeah, he just kind of
went with it. I guess I felt like, in the same way
that the art is like hand-drawn but still looks blocky, I guess
I wanted to do kind of like an HD approach to chiptunes in a way. Same philosophy,
but different execution. So, in my head I was envisioning this
triangle where in like one end you have FM synthesis which is like
very arcade game sounding. You have sample based Tracker music which is like very 90’s PC
or Amiga sounding. And then you have like live instruments,
live band stuff in the third angle. And then all the music would fit
somewhere in between these points with like different ratios. Yeah, it just felt like a good fit
right off the bat in that sense. Between the three of them,
Derek, Andy and Eirik, created an evolved version
of Spelunky Classic, one which still has an active community
playing co-op, solo, death match and logging daily challenges,
to this day. Much like the mines you explore, Spelunky is a bottomless
put of experiences and thus conversations, such as
the power of its emergent design. It’s a game that means a lot to a lot
of people but before I let the trio leave, I wanted to know one more thing. What does Spelunky mean to them? First commercial game I worked on that
was released and it was a big one. It’s also one of my favorite
games that I’ve worked on just because of Andy and Derek
being such good friends and good collaborators, all respecting
each other’s work. It’s one of the most important things
that ever happened in my life. I don’t think there’s any
other way to put it. So, I had gone to school
for computer science and I had done like art and
I was tired of programming but also, when I came out,
like the economy wasn’t good, tried to get into the game industry,
like nothing was really fitting. And a lot of the companies were like,
“Oh, do you want to program or do art? ” I’m like, “Both, can I do both?”
Like, “No, not really.” And so like, doing the toys
was kind of like, oh, well this is a cool new adventure, but in some ways it was like,
oh I’m going to try something new because I’m not really sure
the old thing’s going to work. And to realize like that it could happen and that like I did kind of
get back into the industry. And then, just in terms of like
now I can come to GC and people know who I am and like, you know, will take my phone
calls essentially. Like I mean, my whole kind of career
in video games started with Spelunky. And then also, yeah, the game
did fantastically well so like my personal life changed
a lot because of it and my wife was able to stay
home with our daughters. And yeah, I mean I’m just thankful
that Derek, because, honestly, Derek should not have picked me, right? Like he’s like talking to Jon Blow right, like, and choice two is like guy
who makes wooden toys? Like, that’s a pretty steep drop off,
like we went from like the pinnacle of like one of the top programmers
in the industry to like, guy off the street that hasn’t
programmed in five years. So, like I mean, it was like, it’s wild to me that
he decided to do that and I’m thankful that he did. But I mean, it’s been amazing, yeah. Well, Spelunky definitely represents
just a period of my life, I think, that for me at least, I don’t know
if it’s true of other game developers, but I kind of tend to think about
my life in terms of games. Like, oh, this is the Aquaria point in my
life, this is Spelunky point in my life. As to what it actually represents, like,
what does that time mean to me? Like I’ve been coming
more into my own as a game developer and figuring out
how it was I want to work exactly. I feel like I learned a lot with Aquaria
and like I’m super proud of that game. But Spelunky was when
I feel like I hit my stride. Are you looking forward to getting back
in the saddle and making more games? Yeah, yeah.
I’ve been working on games and of course I think I’m always going
to be working on games and trying to figure out how to develop
games as a dad is certainly interesting. So, yeah, I mean it’s definitely
not an accident that I had my kid after Spelunky
came out. The end of Spelunky marked the end of
the time and the beginning of a new one and so it felt like a good time
to have a kid and now it’s the next period is starting
as far as game development goes. Did they get to Norway at any stage? Not yet. I have extended several invitations to you guys.
-One of these days. Eirik, yeah, comes out here
every now and then and obviously it’s always a real treat
to have him since he’s so far away. But for me it was pretty
life changing actually coming out here for the first time, having been in my own
basement in Norway working on games for a number
of years already and no one having any idea
what I was doing down there. And suddenly I come out here, everyone’s heard of the stuff that I’m
working on, like Spelunky, and when I came back from like
my first trip over here is when I fully realized that I need to quit my
day job and do this like for a living. It feels really good to do it all together, yeah, because I think we all were
in different places in our lives, but yeah, it also was this big change
for all of us too at the same time. And I think we’d all… you don’t really realize like what
was going on until it’s over, right? Like when you’re going through it,
it just feels like, oh this is like normal, it’s like,
I’m doing exciting stuff but it feels like not life changing, it just feels like things are
just happening. And it’s like a time like this
when you meet up and you talk about what happened
and how crazy that was that it really like comes back to you like how big of a change
it really was and how unique that opportunity was, right? Like I feel so lucky but at the time
I just felt, you know, like that kind of thing
just happens, right? And what are you guys doing tonight
when we turn off the camera? We’re talking about doing some karaoke. I’m definitely down for some karaoke.
I really like karaoke. Mini-golf came up.
Some dinner. Definitely dinner, though, first. Yeah. Dinner first, always. - But we’ll see, yeah.
- You’ve got to feed the handy. You know, the guy I met from
Klik & Play and then this Norwegian guy, so who knows like what’s
going to happen tonight.
Wow. That's incredible. Really love that outro too, letting us know what each developer went on to do after the success story is always awesome.
You can tell that Danny too is getting better at putting this stuff together.
Can't wait for FFXIV next considering how that game was death on launch, only to rise back like a phoenix with Heavensward after Square Enix went back and fix tons of stuff.
God damn spelunky is so good. Everyone who enjoys it should read Derek Yu's book about it. It's like a more expanded version of kinda what he talks about in this doc.
Even after all the good press Spelunky gets, I still think it's massively underappreciated. It's probably because it's one of the most slow burn games I've ever played; you have to play for like 20 hours before you even begin to understand why this game is amazing.
If I had to choose between all the great rogue lites we've seen in the last few years, including Isaac, I'd choose Spelunky every time.
I remember playing Eternal Daughter when I was a kid, I never would have imagined it was made by one of the Spelunky guys
I'm so glad noclip exists, it and redlettermedia are the content i look foward the most on YouTube right now
I thought it was a genius little game, I was really enjoying it and learning more about it.
Then I started to look up popular videos and see how people managed to score big in dailies... Ghostrunning really spoiled the fun for me, it's slow and just not fun do, but necessary. I get what the developer tried to do; the risk is there but it's too long to pull off. At a point it's more about Time > Reward than it is Risk > Reward.
If you can get around that then I'd definitively recommend it.
I remember picking up the HD version on my 360 the day it was released and was amazed at the depth and difficulty.
After hours of playing it clicked and I couldn't put it down. Spelunky is the game that got me into roguelikes and is probably one of my favorite games ever. I've probably played over a 100 hours and still haven't beaten it.
After seeing this documentary it does bum me out that Andy and Derek aren't working on projects together and that Derek isn't working on a new video game (from what I can tell).
I only wish I hadn't been spoiled about the chain before I played the game. I mean, watching gameplay did get me to buy it but man...
Can anyone who actually learned about it by themselves tell me about their experience? I feel like it was a similar thing to The Witness in that it would create a lasting memory of one of the greatest moments one would have in gaming.
I enjoyed this but can't shake the feeling that it's not the video Danny envisioned when he set up a series of "rediscovering mystery" videos.
The Frog Fractions videos went pretty deep on the various quirks of the game. The development as a series of gags, the online discovery and the Kickstarter/ARG for Frog Fractions 2.
The Witness went into Jon Blow's design philosophies and how it drove everything in the game, particularly the spoilers later in the video.
This video was just how these people made a rad roguelite platformer. That, in itself, is a cool video that is worth making. It's not "rediscovering mystery".
I feel like there's a whole other video just begging to be made to follow on. They briefly touched on some of the hidden things, the Worm and Castle levels, various funny interactions, but everything past the Ice Caves is ignored (aside from a brief mention of the Hawkman enemy). The quest chain to get to Hell is pretty damned interesting in itself. Then there's the eggplant.
Maybe I'm just disappointed because my introduction to Spelunky was Bananasaurus Rex's eggplant run. Then I got pretty obsessed with the game, to the point where I feel like I've done everything I wanted to do in the game except for an eggplant run.
Maybe that just didn't make for good video content.
Man, I love me some Danny, but does anyone else feel like these docs don't really get into the nitty-gritty enough? Like, I have barely played Spelunky and this didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know.
Similar thing with The Witness. If anyone follows Giant Bomb, they delved into the game with Jon Blow way more than noclip. I understand that these are probably meant to reach a wider audience than the cross-section of Giant Bomb viewers, but I'm pretty sure a large chunk of his backers are from the GB community.
These are extremely hit or miss for me, but he really does a great job with the production. I just wish there was more to bite onto. Might just be me.