Game review: Spelunky for PS Vita

I’ve been meaning to play this game for a while, and with the port to the Vita being a nice 14.99 euros, I figured it might be worth the money for a few hours of distraction. Before plunking down my cash, I decided to watch a YouTube run-through of the game, and then I downloaded the demo. What this taught me quickly was that Spelunky is really hard. It’s also really addicting. So I paid for the full version, and after many, many hours, I can safely say I’ve played as high as I’ll be able to make it for a while. I’ve reached Olemec, the first of the two big bosses in the game, and he tosses me around like an unwanted rag doll.

There’s not much of a story to Spelunky, but what is there is full of Indina Jones clichés. I swapped out the default hero with a woman, and I turned the “damsel” into a dude in the options menu. So in my version of the story, a bored rich white woman with a penchant for green decides to go to some middle eastern or Asian desert to desecrate a tomb, smash ancient pottery, and steal whatever she can find in the name of white supremacy…er, glory, I meant. Taking along only her hunky personal masseuse (Johnny No, so named because every time he dies, I shout “Johnny, NOOOO!”) and a pathetically short whip, this would-be explorer had no idea that she and her hunky young gigolo would be trapped in a cursed underground dungeon where even death could not grant her freedom. The only way to escape is to trek down through the lowest levels of the tombs and mines to reach the demon behind the curse and confront them.

Game play in Spelunky reminds me a bit of Super Mario, and a bit of many other 2D platformers from my childhood. Only this is ridiculously hard. I’ve been killed about a hundred different ways, including being pummeled, stabbed, burnt, eaten by piranha, mind blasted by aliens, crushed or shot in traps, and any other manner of horrible demises. Each time, I’m presented with the options of a quick restart, or a full restart that takes me back to the first room of the game.

The thing is, once I made it past a world without dying, I met a tunnel man who would ask for items to make shortcuts. To access these, I needed to give him an increasing number of bombs and ropes, plus another item that changes with each request. (Note: you have to give him 3 items for each shortcut, meaning you can’t access the higher worlds without playing the current world at least 3 times.) First it was 10,000 gold, and then a shotgun. On the third shortcut, his last request is a key taken from the mines in world 1 and carried through 8-9 levels depending on when you find the key. Just making this one trek took me roughly two days of steady playing, and when I finally got him the key…I died two seconds into the next world.

But at last I fought my way down through the Egypt world and met the first boss, Olemec, a giant floating head who I’m supposed to trick into stomping the floor to break it and send him falling into magma. But what really happens is, he squishes me. A lot.

But let’s talk about the levels in between squishing. You start off every run with 4 hearts, 4 bombs, and 4 rappelling ropes with grappling hooks. The bombs help you break through walls or floors, and the ropes make climbing or descending long drops safer. You can find more bombs and ropes in crates scattered around the levels, or in shops. You can also get more hearts by taking the damsel, male, female, or canine, to the exit, and once you use the exit too, they’ll give you one kiss to replenish a lost heart. Your goal is to reach the exit in a timely manner and explore everything in between before an unseen timer counts down to zero and releases a giant ghost who will kill you with one hit if they touch you.

A word of caution about shopkeepers: don’t set off explosions too close to their shop or they’ll go nuts with a shotgun until they either die in a trap or hunt you down. There’s also environmental explosions or rolling boulders that can also set them off, and once they’re pissed, their fellow shopkeepers will hunt you throughout every level after that.

The shopkeepers also have a gambling wheel, slave labor, and they’ve hired the damsel as a kissing prostitute. Yes, really. While I often bought extra kisses to build my hit points back up, it just didn’t sit well with me to hire someone who was in essence a dumb human shield to wander out in front of me and get killed a few minutes later.

Also, while I’m on the topic, there are altars to Kali, and I saw in a couple run-throughs on YouTube that folks could lay damsels down on the altar as a sacrifice. This doesn’t strike me as a very Indy thing to do, so I don’t do it. I do, however, drop enemies on it on occasion. And there are levels where you can find a golden skull, and if you get this treasure to Kali’s altar, you can summon a gold monkey who shits treasure. Yes, really. (You can also carry the skull to the exit to get a treasure bonus.)

Obviously, I like the game, or I wouldn’t be playing it enough to drain the Vita’s battery multiple times in one day. That said, there is some stuff bugging me about the game. Mostly it’s the stuff like the slave labor or the damsel rescuing. And really, you’re not rescuing them anyway. You’re just dropping them off in the tunnels between levels in exchange for a kiss before they wander into a trap ahead of you. So then you can rescue them again and again and again.

But anywho, these are relatively small gripes, and the game is loads of fun to play. The graphics are simple tiles, and every level is different thanks to random generation. So there no risk of getting burned out playing the same thing over and over. There’s a huge variety of enemies, some of which are like mini-bosses who will require many whip hits to kill. The treasure you collect can allow you to buy special items that will improve your character and make moving around the levels slightly less stressful. The music…is there. It’s not great or terrible, but it isn’t memorable. At least it’s not annoying is how I’ve tended to listen to it for so long.

If I could make requests about available options, I’d like to see the chance to turn off the haunting ghost and make proper exploration in the dungeons less of a pain. Also, I might have liked to add a few extra hearts to my starting count to ramp down the difficulty level somewhat. But even if the game is hard, it never feels cheap. Well, maybe the ghost feels a bit cheap, but the thing is, I’ve not really had a gamer rage moment after dying. I just say “Okay, one more try,” and hit quick restart to put me back at the beginning of the current world.

I guess I like it because it scratches that itch for a simple 2D platform game without having to bog me down with too many gimmicks. It does have a few nifty items like the climbing gloves that let you scale walls, a pickaxe to mine your way through walls or floors, and a rocket pack to fly around traps and descend the deepest pits without fear of taking falling damage. There’s also some guns and boomerangs, and a gold cape that lets you float sort of like Mario does with a tail. I’ve probably only scratched the surface of what you can find in this review, and I think part of the game’s charm comes from finding something new to play with for a few levels.

Overall, I give Spelunky 4 stars, and I’d recommend it to anyone with a Vita looking for a fun platformer with lots of tricky challenges. It’s a good value for the low price, and good for a few laughs when you find some spectacular new ways to die.