![]() Take, for example, the way players associate the four ghosts in Pac-Man with aggression, ambush, capriciousness, and stupidity. This “alive” quality doesn’t depend so much on the complexity of each monster’s artificial intelligence. Tiki men are already more difficult monsters than cavemen, but these little details cement their elite status and therefore their place in Spelunky’s world. ![]() Other patterns quickly play into that notion, like the fact that tiki men are rarer and only appear in the Jungle, whereas cavemen roam around in other areas, too. When you see that a tiki man is really a caveman with a mask and a boomerang, you start to wonder if they belong to a tribe where the tiki men are high-ranking members. The human mind excels at finding patterns and making connections, so just adding a few variations on existing monsters gives the impression that they have families. In designing new monsters, I not only wanted to add more complex interactions and challenges, but I also wanted to make the world feel more alive. And… for everyone, here’s two key passages from Derek’s book: Designing Spelunky’s monsters for ‘complex moments’ (Our Plus member Discord will also have a copy - ping me if you have any trouble accessing it, and allow popups if on a mobile browser.)Īnd if you’re not yet a Plus subscriber, we’ve created a special 20% discount on both yearly and monthly Plus subscriptions until October 15th - so you can jump on board and support all we do. Īnd they kindly agreed to both! So if you’re a Plus member, the entire Boss Fight Books ‘Spelunky’ eBook is now available to download (PDF, MOBI and EPUB) in the Plus data & eBooks back-end. Make the full ‘making of Spelunky’ eBook available to GameDiscoverCo Plus paid subscribers - where it joins the ‘Complete Game Discovery Toolkit’ eBook written by me, as well as a host of other perks. Print some extracts from the book - for all my GameDiscoverCo free newsletter subscribers: they’re on designing Spelunky’s monsters for epic procedural moments, and on finishing your game (a vital thing!) So I asked Boss Fight’s boss (!) Gabe Durham and Derek if we could do two things: I’ve known Derek all the way back into the TIGSource days, and find his design-centric writing about Spelunky - originally released in 2016 - to be wonderfully educational and precise. It’s one of my favorites from the entire Boss Fight Books series on classic games. Using his own game as a vehicle, Derek Yu discusses such wide-ranging topics as randomization, challenge, indifferent game worlds, player feedback, development team dynamics, and what's required to actually finish a game.” (The game has spawned a well-received sequel, of course, but the original has been converted to a host of other platforms - including Nintendo Switch just in the last few weeks.)įor anyone who didn’t know this book existed, it’s described like this on Boss Fight Books’ product page : “ Spelunky is Boss Fight's first autobiographical book: the story of a game's creation as told by its creator. ![]() (Also, Spelunky was the first procedural game to play with the ‘Daily Run’ concept, where everyone gets the same seed to compete against each other.)ĭo you know where we can learn more about the franchise? Via creator Derek Yu’s excellent Boss Fight Books tome documenting his creation of the Xbox Live Arcade ‘HD’ version of Spelunky. (Streamers love them!)Īnd we’re a big fan of the Spelunky series - the inventively brutal 2D platformer which was a modern pioneer of the ‘different behaviors every time for more replayability and fun’ genre. This one started with the concept that procedural/roguelite games continue to shine super-bright in terms of game discovery. Welcome to a special edition of the GameDiscoverCo newsletter, folks.
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