


Given the title relies on procedural generation, every run is different and sometimes the dice roll will not land in your favor, I have seen situations where Monty will spawn in an area that will require way too many resources to reach, exit doors flanked by motion censored traps. Health can be recovered by finding the family dog Monty and bringing him to the level exit alive, this replaces the damsel mechanic that was present in the first game or blowing up/torching turkeys which might be found sporadically in the level. There’s shops which stock a cavalcade of weapons and equipment which might improve her chances of surviving her expedition. That said Ana isn’t exactly a pin cushion waiting to be punctured, she is armed with a whip (whose length feels way too short), she can also stomp on most enemies (although I find myself missing a lot of stomps…often time to my own injury) and she can throw various items found in the environment which can stun or kill. If you manage to avoid enemy encounters, you’ll also have to be mindful of your environment as traps are everywhere and a large assortment do so much damage that they might as well be instant-kills. The fact that the invincibility frames after you get harm is so small that often times you’ll find that you’ll lose multiple hearts in an encounter with the most mundane enemies. Enemies aren’t overtly aggressive, but man will they mess you up if they happen to touch you. Once you dismiss this cognitive dissonance you realize you’re gonna be seeing that first level a lot during your playtime.

It’s fascinating that the moon has caverns with diverse biomes just like the Temple of Olmec in the first game. Spelunky has not returned, So Ana recruited some of her father’s colleagues in an attempt to bring her parents home. So like any normal father he built a rocket ship to fly up to investigate. Seems your old man’s old habits die hard and he intuited that something weird is happening on the moon. Spelunky 2 has you taking control of the daughter of the nameless spelunker (he has a last name now at least…it’s Spelunky) and Yellow (now named Tina). However in a year like 2020 which seems to have browbeaten everyone equally, it felt appropriate to have my gaming ego taken down a notch, so that’s why I willingly played the sequel to Spelunky (even though I never played the first one). I can safely say I’ve never reached the Nuclear Throne, I’ve never beaten the King’s Hand in Dead Cells, I’ve never gotten the good ending for the Binding of Issac. I’m usually not one to subject myself to extremely difficult titles, mainly because I prefer gaming to be a power fantasy, however there are titles which I’m willing to die over and over and over and over again.
