Mmm poster poster poster.

I think my impression of this game is skewed now because of the poster being so awesome...

[Nope! It's SUPERMAN!!!]

Nope! It's SUPERMAN!!!

Wait, no, that's not right.

Perhaps it could be an adolescent human with a small beard going. It's... a young shopkeeper!

Maybe it would even bring items back to shops if it had the chance, and those items would be added to the shop's inventory, and a few gold bars would be added to the thief's inventory.

How about an enemy that likes items? If it sees an item, it will attempt to go to it and take it. Basically, it would go caveman on items. If it finds Indy, it throws him and when he hits a wall, he either drops what he is holding, or one equipped item is dropped. When it is killed, it drops all its items. It could be lured into traps, or it could be (of course) duped into picking up an activated bomb.

Yes, agreeing with need for keyboard controls. Agreeing with THIS GAME LOOKS AWESOME!

I don't think a catcher's mitt would be all that bad. I mean, stop projectiles from one direction, that's nothing compared to, say, FLYING.

Also, "stop projectiles from one direction" made my brain think of telekinetic powers powers. Which means I just connected Spelunky and telekinetic powers. That was awesome.

Successfully robbing the black market should unlock a black-market robbery minigame. (You start in the black market with four health and are unwanted, and have a pistol.) I've found that a large chunk of Spelunky's appeal to me now is getting to the black market so I can try to rob it.

I liked it up until the end.

That plot twist just didn't work. Too big a twist for such little characterization.

Yeah, a friend showed me that pressing "x" on the level-select screen goes to a victory screen. Weird.

Yes, the altars could release ghosts that act like the things the scepter shoots. That would be cool.

But only on altars that come after the spider altar. That would ruin the trap.

Also, I think there could be more altar-destruction punishments than just the current three. My friend destroyed I think five in one play and wound up seeing the same punishment three times, and it was a bit disheartening.

So, we suggest:

Destruction 1: Spiders
Destruction 2: the next one
Destruction 3: the next one
Destruction 4: Blocks randomly fall around Indy (like the king yeti roar, but works with more than ice)
Destruction 5: Large thing (similar to the end boss) appears about five squares above Indy, and follows above him. After a few seconds, it falls to the ground, crushing one layer of blocks beneath it. So Indy will have to go somewhere where it can't follow him (a narrow corridor) quickly, or be able to dodge it when it falls to survive.

Of course, we would need to add positive effects as well, but the idea was unheard of when the system above was conceived.

Still looking forward to this game!

Some sort of combination of overlays would probably be best. Maybe a set of small explosions go off, then a huge one which overlaps the entire sprite, and the sprite gets removed at the specific key frame when the explosion is at its largest.

That's the way to go, I say. Seeing the classic small-explosion sequence leading up to a huge destructionifying 'splodipation all at my hands would be a nice thing.

So, yeah, now that I have Spelunky figured out, I find it much more boring. I played about a hundred times, doing relatively well, then I lost interest.

As for Radix's suggestions, I completely agree with the stunned body acting like other stunned bodies and dealing damage when it hits something. It would work particularly well to alleviate the problem of yetis juggling Indy against walls. And it would be hilarious to see a yeti smash you up against a wall only for your body to come back and smash him into the ground.

My running-with-down is turned off, but when I crouch and have shift held at the same time, and try to move, I run. I would like to crouch have shift down and press a movement key and still crawl. This problem has cause way too many running-off-a-cliff-willy-nilly occurrences to tolerate.

Please, please, please make it so that crouching overrides running!

Also, just this morning, I figured it out. I figured Spelunky out. A friend dared me to try a speed-run, so I tried, and made it to the boss in six minutes on my first try (and died).

I don't know what I figured out, but I figured it out, and now I can make it to the ice caves easily, and I can do it usually in about two-and-a-half minutes.

I've been playing the game wrong this whole time. So now I would like to know why the game is so misleading. I thought I was playing in the intended manner for 1000 plays. And now, within sixty (1010-1070 approximately), my skill at the game has skyrocketed. I don't get it.

Anyway. I like it. I just don't understand how I managed to go 1000 plays without getting it.

The Shopkeeper Union had obtained the ankh, and the rebels didn't want the hedjet to fall into their hands, so they built an inconspicuous container for it in a lower level of the cave to keep them from attaining the ultimate power it could grant them.

An interesting hypothesis, but it seems rather unlikely when you consider that when the player steals the Ankh rather than buying it, he will find a shopkeeper waiting for him inside the Hedjet head. Obviously, the shopkeepers have access to the Hedjet but leave it where it is for purposes of their own.

Your theory about the Trinity of relics seems more plausible. However, I would posit that the trinity is actually made up of the Hedjet, Udjat and Scepter, since the Ankh apparently shatters when the player obtains the Hedjet. On the other hand, I believe it is possible to reach the Black Market without using the Udjat if one is extremely lucky. Therefore, we must consider the possibility of the relics making up a Duality rather than a Trinity. This shows an influence on the creator's part from Eastern mythology rather than Christian ideals. The Scepter represents aggressive power (Yang) while the Hedjet is passive or protective power (Yin).

 

Oh yes, I remember the thing about shopkeepers being in the hedjet stone. Isn't it a bug, though? If it is, then the hypothesis retains credibility. If not, though, then we have to come up with a reason for the SU to keep it there. Perhaps so they could wait, keeping the rebels off-guard, until they had the chance to suddenly obtain both at the same time, instead of gradually, and they could quickly be rid of their opposition instead of having to deal with a drawn-out battle. Once rid of the rebellion, they could use the great Duality to bargain with the alien factions and gain great influence in a large portion of the galaxy.

And I wasn't intending to model it after Christian ideals. I was modeling it after the fact that the ankh, scepter, and hedjet are spoiler. Although I agree with making them into more of a duality, since the Ankh is more of a key-type item, instead of being an actual required item. And the analogy with the scepter and the hedjet being a sort of yin-yang setup is nice.

Well, of course, the rebels built the stone heads,and the Hedjet, Scepter, and Ankh are powerful alien artifacts built by the aliens in the ancient times and left on Earth, as a hiding place from their opponents. Now the opponents know about it, though, and chaos reigns in the ice caves as a result.

The Shopkeeper Union had obtained the ankh, and the rebels didn't want the hedjet to fall into their hands, so they built an inconspicuous container for it in a lower level of the cave to keep them from attaining the ultimate power it could grant them.

They built it so that later on, some hero might come along and overthrow the SU and allow the rebels to finally reunite the great Trinity (Ankh, Hedjet, Scepter) and use its powers to restore the cave to its previous glory (without the undead curses, the mummy's curses, etc.).

Obviously.

Also, grr...

Well, yes, I sort of agree on the yetis throwing each other being silly.

And I feel the need to reiterate the problem of visual spectacle in Spelunky. It feels like about 90% of the game's effects or events only happen when you're dying, but dying is only about 10% of the game. The imbalance makes it frustrating.

I believe the reason behind what you describe is basically that most of the interactions in the game are directly with the player, and involve pain.  I think what you might like would be more interaction between the entities in the levels.  (such as bats attacking more than you, yetis chucking anything they come up to including other yetis, etc)

Yes!

This is what I want!

If more of the things within the levels were to interact more with other things in the level other than the player, it would make more things possible, and the player would be more able to use the environment to his advantage instead of using pure skill. It would make the balance between skill and ingenuity much better than what it is now. (Although I do think there is a lot of possibility for ingenuity in the game now, the requirement for raw talent overpowers it way too much.)

The game needs more enemy-environment interaction to counterbalance the enemy-player interaction. So... what if, say, if a man-eating plant touches a non-living object, it spits it out at throwing speed in the direction it was facing when it touched the object, and it gets hurt. (If it eats an arrow, it should die.) Perhaps if a man-eating plant eats a bomb-frog, it starts to run around like a caveman and explodes eventually, the same with a bomb. If they eat humanoid creatures, they should spit a skull out as if it were thrown.

UFO's should try to steal objects they go over, then try to drop them on the spelunker. If they get destroyed, all the objects in them should come out. If they abduct a bomb, they blow up.

Cavemen should be found trying to throw objects at fish for food. (Perhaps have them throw arrows (max 5 per caveman) into the water if they find themselves at a water edge.)

I think this would make the game much more fun for gamers like me, because it would make it so that people don't have to rely quite as much on natural skill and can rely more on creative use of the environment.

And my friend suggests that you find cows in UFO motherships which can be rescued like damsels.

I see what you are trying to say about innovation and accessibility. The question though is how much accessibility does a game need? Why does accessibility = victory? What I'm just throwing out is can people enjoy the game itself without winning

Well, yes, you can enjoy the game without defeating the boss, but I found it much too hard to enjoy the game without actually being exposed to new content on a more reasonable basis. I would have liked the game much more if I were able to play the levels I wanted to play when I wanted to. I don't see the reasoning behind forcing a player to play the same themed level hundreds of times before they're even allowed to experience the next.

And I also don't see the reasoning behind trying to get more gamers to go over to the "hardcore" side. Is there something inherently wrong with having variety amongst gamers? Is there something inherently better about having games whose difficulty matches that of some other period of time? I don't see how having easy games is a flaw with today's society. If it is, then having faster internet is a flaw with today's society. And so are microwaves. And easier to use operating systems.

And I feel the need to reiterate the problem of visual spectacle in Spelunky. It feels like about 90% of the game's effects or events only happen when you're dying, but dying is only about 10% of the game. The imbalance makes it frustrating. If it were 90:90, it would be much better because then it would be obvious the game was a game about dying. If it were 10:10 it would be better because you wouldn't feel like the game was like the evil DM I analogized it with earlier. (The DM whose player asks if he can do something, the DM says, "Yeah! That's totally awesome! Sure you can do it!" and then when the player's character does it he dies outright. It's a severe buzz-kill.)

Yes, because custom levels allow for randomly generated levels.

Right. I've said this before. I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE FUN IN RANDOMLY GENERATED LEVELS, NOT PREGEN LEVELS. Currently, the only way to advance through the normal game is to ignore almost ALL of the various cool things to do and go through like a scared housewife from the 1800's.

You can make it to level 15 easily from level 1 after 400 plays?

That, I think, goes into the "natural skill" category. Especially if you've grown up with easy games, as you say you do.

A lot of people (such as myself), however, can barely reach the ice area after 1000 plays or so.

People like us (of which there are quite a few) who just plain aren't that great are getting gypped out of the game unless we want to become a robot and stare at the monitor drooling for a few hours waiting for a level-up or something in their "gamer skillz." That, combined with how innovative Spelunky is (view my previous post), makes for very much badness. I mean, even if the easy mode wasn't available until after 100 or so plays, so people who knew how stuff worked in the normal mode now could keep playing that way, and the people who were (as I was) saying, "Fuck this shit, how about making a game that people can actually play?" could move to the easy mode so they could actually experience the game instead of being forced to be miserable for 300 more tries so they could pander to the tunnel man a few times. Then do the whole thing again. And then again.

Yeah, there's the tunnel man, but that's in no way an easy mode. That's a "how about we take out half or more of the game's content and then let you play because you suck" mode.