A gameplay trailer for Spelunky 2, the sequel to our 2013 game of the year, has finally debuted over on the PlayStation Blog, along with an interview with the creator Derek Yu. 

If it looks a lot like Spelunky, that's on purpose, according to Yu. "My opinion about sequels is that they are extensions of the previous games, so I want fans of Spelunky 1 to jump in and feel like they’re playing a continuation, both storywise and mechanically," he says. 

Part of that continuation is the ability to play through the entire game with friends via online multiplayer, and with unique characters. Ana Spelunky is the daughter of our original spelunker, Roffy D. Sloth is a man that is also a sloth, Margaret Tunnel looks like a battle-hardened rogue, and Colin Northward is the spitting image of renowned game developer Colin Northway. Besides the new characters and innumerable new gadgets, enemies, and environments, Spelunky 2 will also feature liquid physics. Water, lava, and more will appear in levels, both as a threat and potential tool in the expected Spelunky style. 

Spelunky 2 will be playable at PAX West this weekend, which I'll be attending. Expect some hands-on impressions as soon as we can get them. 

Sexy Hiking was the original game about having to climb obstacles with a hammer controlled by a mouse. It was infuriatingly difficult. Back in August of 2007 Derek Yu, now known as the creator of Spelunky, wrote it up for his website TIGSource, saying "every new area seems totally impossible at first, and there is NOTHING THERE TO HELP YOU SAVE YOUR OWN GRIT." 

This strange game about a cartoon man with floating hands was made by an enigma from Poland known as "Jazzuo". Jazzuo released a string of B-grade games online, small and ugly and odd things with control schemes that seemed designed by aliens. While rarely remembered today, they were an important influence on the indie games that would follow—most obviously Sexy Hiking's spiritual sequel Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.

We asked Yu and Foddy to talk us through the strange world of Jazzuo, and B-games in general.

PC Gamer: How did you get into Jazzuo's games? What was the first one?

Bennett Foddy: I read about Sexy Hiking on Derek Yu’s TIGSource website back in, oh, 2007 or so. Even then it had been out for a number of years, but Derek revived it with this post. As he anticipated, it was an extremely controversial title in the TIGSource community. Adam Saltsman (of Canabalt and Overland fame) called it "the single worst game I have ever played". Honestly, at the time I dismissed the game, but it became something of a meme among indie game developers, and I never really forgot about it. Years later, I changed my opinion of the game when I showed it to my students at NYU, as part of a class on games by European developers, and I realized how timeless the design was.

Derek Yu: The things I loved about Sexy Hiking are what I assume people love about Getting Over It now—a unique and frustrating challenge coupled with a bizarre premise. Sexy Hiking does beat Getting Over It in one particular category, however, and that's the title. While "Getting Over It" is a good name and Bennett was, for a long time, considered an expert namer of games on the TIGSource Forums, I think even he would agree that "Sexy Hiking" is one of the best game names of all time.

BF: Definitely one of the best titles! Other than Sexy Hiking, the best ones are Sexy Hand and GM Golf. Be careful, some of his games are in extremely poor taste! 

What are the most essential ones to play—what's 'the Jazzuo canon'?

DY: He created another game in 2007 called Hermies the game that was very similar in concept to 2016's Genital Jousting. I have no idea if the creators of Genital Jousting played Hermies, but either way it's proof that Jazzuo was ahead of his time. He made the game for the TIGSource B-Games Competition (which was partly inspired by him) and it won 4.5% of the votes but did not win the competition.

What makes Jazzuo's games so special to me is how raw they are. When I play a game by him or a similar creator, it always feels intimate and honest. As a game developer, it's tempting to start obsessing over polish and making sure the player has a nice, comfortable time, and his games are a reminder that we're also artists trying to express something of ourselves. I think Getting Over It is great because it brought outsider art to the masses in a respectful way. But it's still worth experiencing the original, since there are some aspects that can't be polished without losing something.

BF: People also talk very fondly about his Star Wars Episode VII, but it’s not online anymore and I haven't tried it. I recommend his other 'Sexy' game, Sexy Hand II, which is a golf game with a similarly unusual control scheme, and GM Golf which is like a fusion of Sexy Hiking and Sexy Hand. He made games that were completely unconnected to this series, but personally I think his experimentation with mouse controls led to the most timeless work. 

Bennett, how did those students at NYU react to Sexy Hiking? And what is it you hope they get out of it?BF: They reacted in much the same way as indie developers did in 2007—they were polarized. Some of them became angry at it and refused to continue playing it, a few were captivated by it. I have showed so many old games to students, and honestly usually they can only take a dry academic interest because norms of user interaction and game design have moved on so much from the 80s and 90s. If they get really engaged in playing a game for enjoyment you know it must be timeless. Those games are really in the minority… obviously people still enjoy Mario and Mega Man, but it's a real joy to me if I can find timeless games that American students are entirely unaware of: Alexei Pajitnov's Shawl, David Braben's Zarch, Mike Singleton's Lords of Midnight. 

What is it about Sexy Hiking in particular that appealed to you?

BF: I'm a big fan of messy, realtime physics puzzle games, going back to Elasto Mania (the original Trials physics game) and Ski Stunt Simulator. That's a huge area of inspiration in my own work. But more than that Sexy Hiking just makes a very arresting first impression; there's something really unusual about how it looks, even though the quality is very low. I'm a big believer in the power of games that have an original and powerful 'first screenshot'.

Sometimes people who make B-movies end up becoming almost folk heroes, like Ed Wood or Tommy Wiseau, but that doesn't seem to happen in games. We don't have the same appreciation for B-games we have for B-movies. Why do you think that is? 

DY: Videogames are still young compared to movies and it takes time to foster that kind of appreciation. But Jazzuo is certainly a folk hero to a lot of people in the indie game community and there's a YouTube video of someone beating Sexy Hiking which has over 128,000 views as I'm writing this. Hopefully Getting Over It will keep bringing him to people's attention.

BF: Culturally we just don't recognize the individuals who make games, even in the cases of solo-authored games. Of course there are exceptions, like Jonathan Blow or the great Japanese auteur designers, but generally game reviews and previews don't talk at all about the designers, game players don't know who the designers are, and game designers work actively to make sure their identities are invisible in their games and sometimes even in the credits. This is one of the main reasons I decided to insert myself in Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. 

Jazzuo's a bit of an enigma, having disappeared from games entirely. Would you like to follow in his footsteps some day, just move on and leave a baffling legacy?

BF: Well, times are different, and I have given enough interviews now that I think people would have a pretty good idea of who I was and what I was trying to do, if I suddenly broke contact and moved to the mountains. But no, I hope to potter along making games, most of which will be pretty unpopular.

DY: I plan on staying in games for a long time, but I understand wanting to dissociate from the industry at times. I try to only read and interact with the parts of gaming that are positive for me mentally. I realize that I'm fortunate to be able to do so—not everyone has that luxury. A baffling legacy sounds awesome, though!

What are some other B-games you think are interesting?

BF: I think the other god of B-game development from Jazzuo's period is MDickie, whose magnum opus is The You Testament, a game about Jesus. Other than that, well… B-game is a pretty loosely defined term, which blends into other groupings like "kusoge", and I think the heart of it is games that are deliberately unpolished. I love Pajitnov and Pokhilko's Magnetic Crane from 1989, but it predates developers who thought of themselves as making B-games. I like that Cactus game Dungeon, and Messhof's game You Found the Grappling Hook. I love the Japanese B-Game Super Panda Ball, kind of like a B-game version of Zany Golf. And I guess even though it costs money, we could also count Justin Smith's Realistic Summer Sports Simulator, one of my favorite games of all time.

DY: I highly recommend checking out the work of Ikiki, MDickie, and thecatamites. If I had to pick a game from each to try first, it would be Nikujin, Hard Time, and Space Funeral, respectively. Ikiki's Hakaiman is also great and was a major inspiration for Hotline Miami. 

Welcome back to the PC Gamer Q&A! Every Saturday, we ask our panel of PC Gamer writers a question about PC gaming. Tim's answer is usually 'Hearthstone'. This week: which game would you take to a desert island?

Shout out to the enjoyable podcast Final Games, which asks this very question to guests every episode (which have included PCG's Andy Kelly and Samuel Roberts in the past), allowing them to pick six games. Here, though, we've just limited the selection to one game. 

As ever, we'd love to hear your suggestions in the comments, too.

Tim Clark: The Orange Box

I've resisted the temptation to draw Samuel's ire by answering Hearthstone again, but I am going to assume the island has a working internet connection and pick The Orange Box. Between the infinite replayability, the sheer joy of Portal, and the no small matter of Episodes 1 and 2, I'm pretty sure I win on pure value. 

Jarred Walton: Game Maker Studio/Unity Engine

Game? How about software? Depending on how ambitious I'm feeling, I'd take either Unity Engine or Game Maker Studio. Then, as I basked in the sun waiting for rescue for the next several years, I could finally see about getting around to building my magnum opus. And let's assume I have all the necessary tools for doing graphics, sound, etc. and that infinite power is available.

The game would be something cyberpunk, but the great thing about having a software development platform is that I wouldn't need to create just one game. I could dabble in all sorts of genres and make as many games as I wanted—or at least, as many as I had time to create before I was rescued, brought back to humanity, and became an instant millionaire with my wildly successful first indie release. Don't pinch me, I'm enjoying my dreams.

Jody Macgregor: Stardew Valley

Is it weird to bring a game about growing food to an island where I'll be growing food to survive? Stardew Valley could be useful, reminding me when it's a good time to plant turnips or whatever. Plus, since I assume there's no wi-fi on this island, I'd be able to experience it properly. I came to Stardew Valley late so there was already a wiki full of advice on what gifts to give people and where they hang out at any time of day, which spoiled it a bit for me. I never had that experience of waiting outside somebody's door all day just to give them a fish they'd asked for.

Mostly I'd bring Stardew Valley because it would make me less lonely. That virtual village of people would be better substitute friends than a ball with a face on it. Spending time with them makes me genuinely happy. Just filling my dog's bowl, harvesting some crops and walking into town to check in with people lifts my spirits, straight-up sunshine injected into my heart. The only other game that improves my mood as surely as Stardew Valley is Blood Bowl, a game about football and murder, but let's gloss over that.

Andy Kelly: The Witcher 3 and all the DLC

If I'm trapped on a desert island, escapism is going to be important. So I'd take The Witcher 3 and all the DLC. That's a game you can get lost in, and it's so impossibly huge that by the time I've finished it I'll have forgotten most of it, making it feel fresh when I start all over again.

And when I've absolutely exhausted the storyline and know every quest by heart, I can just focus on getting really good at Gwent. Maybe set myself a goal like beating every single Gwent-playing NPC in the Northern Kingdoms or collecting every card. That should rinse through a few years. 

Wes Fenlon: Spelunky

I'm just going to be honest: the only way I'd ever complete a Hell run in Spelunky is if I was trapped on a desert island with nothing to do but play Spelunky. Instead of telling you again why it's incredible, I'll just refer you to its #10 ranking on this year's Top 100, and its well-deserved Game of the Year 2013 award. 

Chris Livingston: Crusader Kings 2

Really, even in casual dabblings with CK2, there's always something interesting happening, some curious and enjoyable little stories bubbling to the surface, some random events throwing a medieval wrench into the works, some massive battle or minor yet incredibly personal beef occupying your attention. Every session of CK2 feels completely different, even with the same starting country and scenario. If I can bring some of the full conversion mods along too, I'll never be wanting for great new stories and long-lasting memories. And I play for a few years solid with no interruptions, maybe one day I'll be so on top of things that my character won't be over their demesne limit. 

Austin Wood: Dungeons of Dredmor

I was having trouble with this one until Wes answered Spelunky. Which reminded me that, despite countless runs, I've never actually reached the bottom of Dungeons of Dredmor and killed Dredmor himself. A trip to a desert island would give me time to finish things once and for all. Plus if I can finagle mod support, or at least download the DLC, I may still never see everything the dungeon has to offer. 

Samuel Roberts: Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

I'm half-tempted to pick an MMO I've never had time for, like The Old Republic or Guild Wars 2, but if I'm being honest with myself, MGS5 is the one. Missions play out differently each time, and the more hours you invest, the more tools you unlock to mess around with the enemies and their surrounding environment. Reaching S-rank on every mission would consume plenty of time, and while island life would be lonely, I could always pat D-Dog if it all gets a bit much.

But what about you, kind reader? Let us know below.

Spelunky is a perfect videogame—the perfect videogame, perhaps. Or at least, it is if you forget that the 2012 version shipped with a deathmatch mode. Not many people talk about Spelunky deathmatch, in which up to four players brawl on a single-screen arena, using bombs and ropes and shotguns and rocks to pound the ever loving spe-lunk out of each other. It's adventure mode's weird, less-popular friend.

I think I understand why: If you dip into the mode solo using the default settings, you’re fending off three erratic AI opponents, in addition to a laser target which roams the screen smiting anyone who stays still for too long. Oh, and the ghost: the dreaded ghost from the adventure mode turns up as well, so the whole thing just feels like a frantic mess to most newcomers. You’ll likely die within three seconds of spawning (no exaggeration) and then you’ll likely quit the mode three seconds later. It’s about as bad as a first impression can get. 

But for the last two years at least, Spelunky deathmatch has been my bread and butter. I’ve played Nidhogg, Towerfall: Ascension, Sportsfriends, Videoball… and none of them are as good a couch multiplayer game. You may believe Spelunky’s finely wrought roguelike adventure mode was the modern classic, but nope: deathmatch is up there with it.

The first step to enjoying Spelunky deathmatch is to ignore its default settings. They’re crap. Turn off ghosts, turn off targets, turn off bots. Never, ever use bots. Then increase the amount of lives per match to 10. Then, increase each player’s bomb amount to 10 (just do it). Now you’ve got at least one perfect deathmatch game, but you might find other settings that work better for you.

The best thing about deathmatch Spelunky is that it inherits all of the complexity of its more popular sibling, while also demanding speed and reflexes the likes of which are rarely needed in adventure mode. For example, most adventure mode players know you can whip bombs to carefully nudge them into awkward places with more accuracy, but did you know you can whip away airborne bombs that have been lobbed at you? It’s tricky, but you can and you’ll need to, because being stunned is a death sentence. 

Other tricks you might not use often in adventure mode become crucial in deathmatch, too: for example, learning to lob bombs with precision as an offensive attack, or just as a means to stun an opponent. Bombs are less tools of navigation and more automatic grenade launchers, and learning to predict their bounce patterns and trajectories is one of the first hard lessons you’ll receive—especially if your opponent has lobbed 10 at once. 

Elsewhere, ropes are surefire ways to stun opponents from below; the teleporter is a neat portable telefragging device; and learning the maps and the best positions from which to lob bombs becomes more important than mere dexterity. Meanwhile, obscure items from the main game such as the shield—only found in a single hidden area in adventure mode—become powerful tactical tools in the deathmatch setting. Lessons that couldn’t vaguely apply to adventure mode (except map learning, of course) compose the moment-to-moment stouches in deathmatch, where having the baseball gloves, a jar of sticky glue and a full inventory of bombs can prove disastrous to your opponent.

Will the newly announced Spelunky 2 have a deathmatch mode? No idea, but I hope so. I wouldn’t blame creator Derek Yu and co for leaving it out, since it gained no traction in the original, but I reckon even the existing deathmatch mode could have its fate reversed just with a few tweaks to its default settings. There’s so much potential, and if it had online support that would be a dream. I want Spelunky deathmatch to be an esport. I want it to be on ESPN. It would make the world nicer.

Let’s assume for a moment that Spelunky 2 deathmatch exists: how can it improve upon the original? Aside from the obvious tweaks to its default game settings, I’d definitely include a level editor, and I’d be careful to remove items that are utterly useless in the mode (such as the parachute, as none of the maps are high enough to permit fall damage). Player spawns can also be a bit uneven and unfair, especially with four-players. Of course, we don't really know anything about Spelunky 2—its weapons, items, and so on—so apart from those elementary changes, it’s hard to guess at what else might be done.

Even Yu thought deathmatch was underrated, though he admitted he and co-creator Andy Hull were to blame. “I think it was because people just didn’t play it the way Andy and I did while we were developing it, where it was just much more tactical,” he told me last year. “We didn’t chuck bombs all over the place, we’d wait for that perfect opportunity and try to take out the person when they were vulnerable."

“I definitely don’t blame the players or anything like that," he added. "I think a lot of people do have a lot of fun with it, as a more casual thing. It may also be that adventure mode is more compelling than deathmatch mode.”

No, it’s not Derek. And while I’m at it, chucking bombs all over the place is totally a viable strategy.

Update: Developer Mossmouth Games (read: solo developer Derek Yu) has confirmed Spelunky 2 is coming to Steam. A release date has not yet been announced. 

Original story: 

Spelunky 2 was announced during today's PlayStation Paris Games Week livestream. As you can imagine, it was announced specifically for PlayStation 4, but given Spelunky's history and origins, the sequel is a shoo-in for PC. 

Apart from the trailer above, we don't know much about Spelunky 2. Though we do at least have one big detail: you play as the child of the protagonist of Spelunky 1. 

In any case, more Spelunky is good news. There's a reason we rated it number-one on our list of the best indie games to play right now. 

Spelunky creator Derek Yu hinted at something new a couple of weeks ago when he tweeted a screenshot of what appeared to be a new game, accompanied by the hashtag #UFO50. Right around the same time, two other indie developers, Jon Perry and Eirik Suhrke, tweeted different images using the same hashtag. What, we wondered, could it be? Today, the secret was revealed. 

"UFO 50 is a collection of 50 single and multiplayer games from the creators of Spelunky, Downwell, Time Barons, Skorpulac, and Madhouse," the website at 50games.fun explains. "Jump in and explore a variety of genres, from platformers and shoot 'em ups to puzzle games and RPGs. Our goal is to combine a familiar 8-bit aesthetic with new ideas and modern game design sensibilities." 

The concept for each game in the package comes from a single director, "but everyone on the team [Yu, Perry, Suhrke, Paul Hubans, and Ojiro Fumoto] worked on games they didn't direct and helped with art, programming, and design." Individually, they won't be quite as large as the 8-bit games from back in the day, but each one will be a full game, with estimated total playtime for the bundle running over 100 hours. All of them will have a single-player mode, and roughly a third will feature some form of multiplayer as well.   

The games aren't directly connected to one another, but UFO 50 itself is built on the story of a fictional development company from the 1980s, "obscure but ahead of its time," who created them. They also share a 32-color palette "and other restrictions we decided on to make them feel more authentic." 

UFO 50 is expected to be ready for release sometime in 2018. Pricing hasn't been set, but the developers say they "want it to be an easy purchase." Have a look at some more (appropriately lo-res) screens down below.

On July 26, Derek Yu, creator of Spelunky, posted a screenshot to Twitter (see above) using the hashtag #UFO50. No explanation, no details, just the screenshot of a Spelunky-ish-looking platformer or sidescroller with a dinosaur head, some happy tomatoes, a gem, and some sort of tiny spaceship (maybe) firing lasers (maybe). Mysterious!

Also mysterious: two other game-makers have posted screenshots using the same hashtag on July 24 and July 25 (see below). The two screens are from Jon Perry, who worked with Yu on tactical card game Time Barons, and Eirik Suhrke, who worked with Yu on Spelunky. They, too, have not elaborated further on their screenshots.

Soooo... what is UFO50? We don't know. None of these screenshots appear to be from the same game, so is UFO50 a compilation of games? 50 games? Is it a collaboration of some sort, wherein one game will have different minigames or modes by different designers? 50 of them? Will this wordless screenshot posting continue for 47 more days? Will I bother to email anyone to ask, or just continue to sit here lazily asking questions? 50 questions?

Okay, I just emailed Yu and I'll let you know if I hear anything back. In the meantime, keep watching the skies, or at least keep watching the #UFO50 hashtag.

From beating the game in just 100 seconds, to staggering no gold pacifist runs, Spelunky record-breaking runs are a joy to watch. And with so many working parts, players are still finding new ways to best the already impressive feats, more than three years since the game's release—the latest of which is the work of Kinnijup, whose $3,526,575 money score marks a new world record. 

While Spelunky speedruns are undoubtedly incredibly difficult (I genuinely have no idea how players manage to avoid embedding themselves in walls when operating the teleporting device), money scores provide an entirely different challenge. These runs are about perseverance, grind and guile, as players strive to outwit enemies and cover each map from corner to corner, mining every gem possible along the way. 

This almost always meaning running the clock down past 2.30, which throws The Ghost into the mix—something which tends to make these runs even more nail biting still. At four hours and 32 minutes, here's Kinnijup's world record-breaking performance and, as you might expect, things get pretty tense towards the end.

To Kinnijup, I doff my cap.

The latest Humble Bundle is pretty darn awesome. Named the Humble Revelmode Bundle (because it s organised by YouTube chap PewDiePie s creator network Revelmode), this collection gathers the likes of Nidhogg, Spelunky, Golf With Your Friends, Roguelands and Rocket League all in the one place via the familiar tiered payment format.

Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball, Choice Chamber, and Nidhogg the latter of which we described as a brilliant marriage of mechanics, level design and music all befall the pay-what-you-want premier tier; while paying above average ( 4.86/$6.45 at the time of writing) also nets you the Early Access-dwelling Golf With Your Friends, Skullgirls and a bunch of its DLC, Roguelands, and the wonderful rock shelter-swiper Spelunky.

Psyonix's formidable car-ball-cage 'em up Rocket League can also be yours on top of all that, so long as you re willing to fork over 11.30/$15. As always you ve got the option to split your dough between the game creator s, Humble itself, and a selection of charities.

The Humble Revelmode Bundle is live now and runs until July 26.

The best thing about Derek Yu s new book about Spelunky is that it answers all the questions I ve ever wanted to ask about his game. The worst thing about Derek Yu s new book about Spelunky is that it leaves very few questions to ask him directly. Part indie development motivational tome, part technical retrospective, Spelunky (the book) is something fans of the game will devour in one sitting, just as I did.

Published by Boss Fight Books, Spelunky traces the game s origins as a free-to-play browser game built in GameMaker, through to the release of the HD remake on XBLA in 2012 and PC the following year. Back then, major indies arriving on console was still a novelty, Early Access and Kickstarter weren t yet phenomenons, and the roguelike had yet to have its unlikely revival, save for The Binding of Isaac.

Spelunky is a divisive game: those who love it sing its praises at every given opportunity, while those who dislike it do so with a belligerent, unreasonable and frankly alarming passion. When PC Gamer named it the best game of 2013, you better believe there was much handwringing involved. For those who love the game, reading about how and why the Hell Run chain was installed, or what inspired the eggplant, will be required reading. Accessible dives into the logic behind the game s randomised dungeons is also present, as is a sort-of manifesto on Yu s preference for game worlds that are indifferent to the player.

I spoke to Derek on Skype a couple of weeks ago. His book is out now through Boss Fight.

PC Gamer: Was it as difficult writing a book as it was making a game?

Derek Yu: Yeah, it was pretty difficult. I mean, going into it I hadn t written anything over a few pages long in college I remember writing papers that were about three pages long. The sheer enormity of having to write something that long was pretty daunting. Mainly, I just realised I didn t have as many writing tools as I thought I had and I don t mean keyboard. [I mean] the vocabulary, the phrases that one needs to put a book together of that length. You need to find ways of saying things that sound interesting, but you need the variety as well. The final book I think ended up being 48,000 words or something like that, so writing and having it edited by professional writers, I realised how many stock phrases and words I really rely on day-to-day. You need to come up with more interesting ways to say things. Putting your thoughts out there is one thing, but putting your thoughts into a form that reads well and is interesting is another.

Then there s the difficulty of describing game design and gameplay using words and making it sound interesting: I ve always had a hard time with that. In the book I started with how I would introduce Spelunky to people when I met them for the first time. That s always been a difficult thing for me because there s so much in the game, and boiling that down into a few sentences, even for people who are familiar with games, is hard. If you think about a lot of classic games, if you try to describe them in words for readers who have no background with them, [it can be hard]. Like Mario: you re this little guy breaking blocks. It sounds weird and totally not fun at all. That s probably why, when we describe games, we rely so much on it s X meets Y , this is the Dark Souls of strategy games, or something like that. Because it s so hard to describe in words what playing a video game is really like and how that s exciting. All of that was very challenging.

PCG: Do you still play Spelunky?

DY: No, not really. I played it so much during development and immediately after release. I d be interested in how many developers play their games. I mean, every now and again I ll play a little bit, usually just to check something. When I was working on the book and wanted to check something, I d play the game. You have to realise I ve been playing Spelunky since the original freeware version in 2008, and I played it until the release of the PlayStation versions of the game. I d been playing it non-stop.

PCG: Sometimes I think I m done with Spelunky. I leave it for two to three months, but then something happens and I m sucked back in.

DY: I think the other thing for me is that it still hasn t been long enough that I can play it for fun. When I m playing a game I m still always a bit on edge in terms of thinking about it, wondering what s going to go wrong, thinking about how I d make improvements. There s not really much I would improve with Spelunky, but the feeling that I should be looking for those things is still present. At this point if I wanted to play a video game for fun or to relax, I m not going to play one of my own games.

PCG: You say there s not much you d improve about Spelunky, but that implies there are small things. Is that true?

DY: Yeah, I don t really think there are, to be honest. I think Spelunky as it is, is pretty set. Another thing is, as time passes even things that may have been flaws become part of the game. I could say, maybe I want to improve the graphics because I m better at drawing now , but you start to get used to something the way it is and has been, and you don t want to change it because the flaws become part of its character and personality. Aside from maybe some small bugs lingering in the game, I don t think there s anything especially anything fundamental to the design.

PCG: Since Spelunky HD released on XBLA in 2012, Early Access has become popular. It somewhat mirrors the way you initially developed Spelunky in GameMaker, seeking feedback from the TIGsource community. Do you think the rise of Early Access is a good thing, or not?

DY: I think it s good. I personally wouldn t ever do Early Access. At this point I feel like I wouldn t use it unless I really had to for some reason, because I wouldn t want that pressure of having people watch the development as it progresses. It would be more difficult to make the decisions I need to make. It s the same reason I probably wouldn t do a Kickstarter: I think a lot of people do it not just for the funding but for the marketing and promotion, but I think right now, with the sales of Spelunky and Aquaria, I can fund my next game myself and choose not to go the Kickstarter route, even for the promotion. Investors make it harder, and adds more pressure it gets people s expectations going before you really want them to have any expectations.

Expectations are so critical. I think that people s expectations of the remake of Spelunky, based on the original, coloured the way that they saw the game when it first came out. I think there was a significant amount of criticism of the remixed music and graphics, because people were so used to the pixel art and the original music. If that original game didn t exist, those people who didn t like the new graphics and music probably wouldn t have felt the same way, without those expectations. Early Access can be great, but you need to weigh the trade-offs very carefully. For people who need the funding, or for people who need the motivation… I think it can be hard to make a game that no one will see for years. I even released the freeware version of Spelunky as a beta on TIGsource in part because I wanted the motivation. I didn t know if it was good. But you may not need any of those things.

PCG: Late last year there was a lot of chatter about  a so-called "Indiepocalypse", and the gist was that it s much harder to get any exposure as an independent developer nowadays, because the market is so saturated. Do you think that s true?

DY: It s hard to say for me, because I ve released Aquaria and Spelunky, and having already released some successful games really makes a huge difference. I mean, I think Jon Blow said it himself about The Witness, that because of Braid a lot of people checked it out. It is hard for me to speak on what it would be like, or what it s like for new developers right now.

Things like Indiepocalypse and this is the end of indie : those kind of phrases I don t really buy into. I think there are definitely a lot of new challenges now that indie gaming and gaming in general is a much larger and more diverse place. That said, I think there are a lot of benefits to that, the tools are better, and I think there are a lot more resources available for people to use to make their games, to distribute their games and to learn how to make games. I definitely don t think indie gaming as a whole is in trouble. I think there are some new challenges but there are some new positives. I think the competition level is definitely higher, but the tools and resources are better.

PCG: Do you think there are too many games now?

DY: It s hard for me to say I wish that there were fewer games . I just want to see more and more games. The more the better. It s definitely more crowded though, and I will say that it was probably easier to get noticed when I was working on Aquaria and Spelunky. That said, it also seemed scarier then because not as many people were doing it. It felt more lonely, it felt more like… what are we doing? Is this even a legitimate thing to be doing as a career? How are we going to sell our game, and will people even want to buy it, compared to the big blockbusters? There were a lot more questions. That said, it also felt very cosy, and when you did meet other indies at GDC or wherever, it really felt like a family. Now I think there are so many more people, it definitely feels more crowded now.

Next page: Derek's favourite Spelunky character, and why deathmatch mode never caught on.

PCG: There s a section in the book called feedback loop where you write that Spelunky was a small idea that quickly grew organically. That seems like an ideal situation for a creative person. Is that a hard phenomenon to trigger? Do you work for it, or does it arrive in a fit of inspiration?

DY: You definitely have to put in the work. Start with small ideas and try making them. What I found is that I d often hit a wall, so I d go back and think about what I m going to do again, find a new idea, mix and match some existing ideas I ve already had and go back at it. You hit a wall, and then you hit another, and eventually you get to an idea where everything seems to fit and you just start flying.

That s kinda how it was with Spelunky: I had all these prototypes before Spelunky, and they were all really exciting at the start but pretty soon you hit a wall. Once I started working on Spelunky I never hit the wall, I just kept going and going, and there kept being more interesting avenues to explore with it. I don t think I would have just come across it without working on the previous prototypes, which meant sitting down and making games. I definitely advocate actually making games, getting your hands dirty, because that s the only way to really figure out what sticks. There are so many ideas that sound good in your head, but when you start working on them they aren t [that good].

PCG: Spelunky's Deathmatch mode is one of my favourite competitive games. You write in the book that you were surprised people didn t pick it up more. Why do you think they didn t?

DY: It s a good question. I think it was because people just didn t play it the way Andy [Hull, Spelunky programmer] and I did while we were developing it, where it was just much more tactical. We didn t chuck bombs all over the place, we d wait for that perfect opportunity and try to take out the person when they were vulnerable. Whereas I think most people who tried deathmatch, and maybe multiplayer in general especially for a game like Spelunky where the deathmatch was never really a part of the core game to begin with I think expectation played quite a big part. I feel like that s on us, to get players to understand how to play the game properly. I definitely don t blame the players or anything like that. I think a lot of people do have a lot of fun with it, as a more casual thing. It may also be that adventure mode is more compelling than deathmatch mode.

PCG: We ve got a tournament going in the office. We play 1v1, 12 bombs, 4 ropes, and everything else on default except the ghost, target and AI is toggled off. We find it very tactical with those settings.

DY: It s possible that there are people out there having a lot of fun with deathmatch and it s just not really being broadcast on the internet where I would be able to find out. I tend not to watch a lot of Spelunky streaming anyways, kinda for the same reason I don t play it: it s just slightly stressful for me. I usually just watch the highlights people send me. I think it s also the case that deathmatch isn t a very well-explained mode. It s just there and it s up to you to figure out what to do with it.

PCG: There have been some impressive Spelunky runs: someone killed the ghost, someone got the eggplant to Yama, recently there was a no gold pacifist run. It feels like the community has done everything in this game, but is there any other devious challenge you could set?

DY: Oh boy. I don t think there is! Nothing that s really within reason. I joked about people playing it blindfolded but I don t really suggest that, actually. I don t think Spelunky has enough audio cues to let you do that without a tonne of luck. I said it in the book: people have already completely surpassed our expectations in terms of what can be done in the game. The limits of the game, or what we thought were the limits, aren t the limits at all they ve been surpassed by people like Bananasaurus Rex. At this point anything people do is new and surprising to us.

PCG: Did you expect Spelunky to be such a great spectator sport?

DY: I didn t, though I hoped that it would. With Spelunky Classic, I really thought the random nature of the game would limit it as a competitive game, but it s not been a problem at all if anything the random nature has made it more exciting for speedrunners and challenge runners. Someone released a speedrun of the original Spelunky and broke down exactly what they were thinking at each spot, and talked about how they used the randomisation to their advantage, how they accounted for the randomisation. There is such a thing as increasing your luck with the randomisation by doing certain things, and that gave me hope that Spelunky would be pretty competitive, despite or because of the randomisation that s involved in it.

PCG: You begin to have an innate feel for how the levels are constructed after a while.

DY: That s the thing that I didn t necessarily know would be true, working on the game. I think I had a certain intuition about it too, it just seems to work because despite the randomisation it s not complete chaos. There s enough in Spelunky that s handmade versus random or procedurally generated that from run to run, you never see the exact same formations, but you find familiar ones.

PCG: I ve found in my time playing Spelunky that the Black Market is the easiest place to kill the shopkeepers, thanks to the Ankh room. It s very easy to lob bombs safely down there. Was that deliberate?

DY: It wasn t deliberate but it s one of those things where I quickly realised that it s easy to get them there. I didn t plan it that way per se, it s just one of those things where it happened to work out, which was the case for a lot of Spelunky. Intuitively I design things a certain way without understanding necessarily why I was doing it that way, but after playing it or having other people play it and watching other people play it, I kinda understood why I did it. As I m working on a game, I don t necessarily have these strict ideas in mind, it s more like feelings. It s why you have to make a lot of games and spend a lot of time doing it, to build up that intuition. Then I think making games feels more like drawing, which also feels more right and satisfying, and you feel like you re putting more of yourself into it. It s better than thinking in terms of nitty-gritty design rules.

PCG: I know that Spelunky is feature complete and you ve moved on, but is there any potential to get Steam Workshop support for it? There are third-party map creation tools out there.

DY: To be honest I haven t thought too much about it. Andy Hull (programmer for Steam + Xbox) would have to want to do it. I m certainly cool with people using editors and stuff to mod the game with, but I don t know about Steam Workshop there would have to be a lot of demand for us to go and muck around in that code again. At this point we re pretty happy to move on.

PCG: Are you working on something at the moment?

DY: Yeah, we re working on a few different things, but unfortunately nothing is far enough along that I can really reveal what it is. The book has taken up a lot of my time during the past year, or over a year. Now that s winding down I m spending more time on games again.

PCG: Are you working alone on the prototyping and conception?

DY: A little bit. It s hard to say that I m in solitude now because I have a daughter, so I feel like I m never alone anymore. I m also working with other people on things. I m doing a little bit of the totally solo prototyping which I did when working on Spelunky, but it s definitely not the same. So much is different now. One is that, like I said in the book, Spelunky really kind of came about because of Aquaria in a way, because I wanted something that was different from Aquaria. That was such a difficult development for me and Alec Holowka [co-creator of Aquaria], so I really needed to decompress and make something very small. I don t feel that as much with what I m working on now, because Spelunky, even though every game development is very challenging, I think the development of Spelunky was a challenge that was much less exhausting for me on a mental and spiritual level.

PCG: What games are you playing at the moment?

DY: I haven t been playing as many games as I have in the past. Mostly I ve been playing smaller indie games and mobile titles, because those are the ones that fit my lifestyle more now. Being a parent, I spend a lot of time parenting and when I have free time I want to work, and so my time for playing video games is a lot more limited. I have to sneak it in. Most of last year I played a tonne of Puzzle & Dragons. I think a lot of people saw me Tweeting about that, and thought why are you playing that? It s actually a really good game. It s quite rewarding in terms of requiring a pretty high level of skill to master and all that. There s a lot of variety and the fundamental mechanics of the game are very interesting, it s an extremely innovative extension on basic match three mechanics. I don t play it as much now, but last year I played it a lot.

Other than that I ve mostly been trying smaller games out. Though I was playing The Witness for quite a bit. That s the thing, longer form games I have trouble with because I ll enter a period where I can t play it much and it s hard to get back into. What I played of the Witness was really good.

PCG: Who s your favourite Spelunky character?

DY: You know, I think I usually just play as the Spelunky guy, the main character. I actually like the little purple girl with the glasses.

PCG: She s my favourite, too!

DY: I also like the purple pirate girl. There s something about purple. Usually I play as Spelunky guy, though. But I do like the underdog characters, I like to play the more interesting or underused ones. I used to play Ken in Street Fighter 2 a lot, but I moved to Dudley in Street Fighter 4 because he was a much more interesting and underused character.