The main adventure is pretty much all IвЂ™m going to need for a few years, but you can also go on a seeded run (a specific dungeon), take on the daily dungeon challenge, or opt for an arena battle mode for up to four players. Sometimes I paused the game just to listen to it, unfettered by all of the denizens of the cave nipping at my heels. This is all accompanied by sharper, more emotive visuals, coupled with a soothing and memorable soundtrack. I had to remember to look out for arrow traps again, sure, but with a brand new outlook amid a ton of other kinks like mounts and extra items to micromanage. IвЂ™ve mentioned the similarities several times now, but playing through the sequel, in some ways, was honestly like learning a whole new game. Then minutes (or even hours) later, it can all click, if you let it.

The adventure is also a bit longer, with one very lengthy portion that doesnвЂ™t allot any traditional shortcuts. You even need to watch out for innocent-looking plant-life more than usual, as thereвЂ™s an extraordinary amount of one-hit kill traps now. My colleague Jordan and I were particularly irate about instant-death bear traps, several of which are 99.9% concealed by terrain.

New things are going to jump out at you and surprise you - often to the point of frustration. Your wits are once again the strongest tool in your arsenal. You can toggle off just about everything relating to the UI, as well as customize the avatar of your pet (dog/cat/hamster) and all of your controls. Every other ability is at the mercy of the items you have available to you during that specific run - and death means itвЂ™s back to the beginning, minus the shortcuts you unlock along the way. You can jump, whip, throw up a rope/toss a bomb (provided you have the stock), and run. The sequelвЂ™s general locomotion and mechanics are vaguely the same. Light story segments are pushed through quick lore parchments, but thatвЂ™s all fleeting the bulk of the game is still about dying, exploring, dying, then dying some more. ThereвЂ™s still a little tutorial room, a вЂњhubвЂќ that you can use shortcuts in, all of that jazz. YouвЂ™ll begin as Ana, an intrepid adventurer who lands on the moon in search of a mysterious relic of Olmec: a key mythological figure of the first game. Spelunky 2В thankfully continues that legacy.ДЄ lot of the sequel will feel very familiar, and thatвЂ™s perfectly okay. The kinks were still being worked out by myriad developers, but Derek Yu had a cohesive vision that married theВ cacophony of chaos and challenge in a way that justвЂ¦sung. This was the early days of the modern roguelike. ItвЂ™s been eight years since the non-freeware release of Spelunky, but those layouts are still fresh in my mind.