Spelunky’s daily challenge system will provide competition, rage on Steam

Before there was Rogue Legacy, there was Spelunky – a fun little 2D platformer featuring randomly generated levels, an archaeologist hero, and… death. A whole lot of varied modes of quite permanent, start-your-game-over-now death. Well, Spelunky’s coming to Steam soon in a far more tweaked-up and updated form as compared to its original incarnation, and it’s going to bring some upgrades along with it. One of those upgrades will be the daily challenge system – a single generated level that’s the same for all players that day, and at which everyone gets a single attempt at completion. Fail the challenge, and that’s it. No starting over from the beginning, no learning your mistakes… insofar as the leaderboard is concerned, your chance ended the moment you landed head-first on all of those spikes. If this sounds like fun to you, I admire your gaming masochism – and it’s one more reason to look forward to Spelunky’s Steam release this August 8th.

If you haven’t given this game a try in the past, by the way, I really suggest following that original incarnation link and giving it a go. Previously Spelunky had some very charming and skillful pixel art – it’s amazing what someone can do with a 16×16 pixel grid – and it’s nice to have that old version being offered up for free. In part because it tells me that the new Steam version is going to have to have quite a lot above and beyond what the original did in order to make them suitably distinct. If it’s your first experience with this game, give it a shot and let me know what you think. For me, it’s almost a classic at this point.