A couple of weeks old, this one, but still definitely worth the mention. It’s ‘Spelunky’, the ‘fast-paced platform game’, involving a mix of ‘tension, re-playability, and variety of a roguelike’.
His words not mine, ‘his’ being Derek Yu of Aquaria and TIGSource fame. Yu has been working hard to get his creation out and playable and has now released version 0.99, so he can’t be too far off, me thinks. He describes the game in a forum post at TIG:
“Probably the easiest way to describe Spelunky is that its (kind of) like La Mulana meets Nethack – every time you play the levels, items, monsters, and so forth, are all procedurally-generated. And the terrain is destructible and there are quite a few ways in which the various game elements can interact with one another.”
All very well and good, but does it play well? My boxes were ticked, but why don’t you give it a download and see what you think.
I can’t stop playing this game. I still can barely make it into the second tier, but i feel so determined! It was actually inspiring enough to make me break out XNA and start fiddling with code again.