Exploring Caves With The Creator Of Spelunky

“How do I tell the world Derek Yu is dead? And worse yet – it’s my fault?”

It may seem absurd, but I am constantly asking these questions as Yu climbs up a mountain. Safety gear is not required. No helmet. His hands, his sneakers, and determination. I have to follow soon after, and though I’m undoubtedly scared, in the moment, I’m much more afraid of killing the creator of Spelunky than my own mortality. Though you could argue, in this hyper-specific example, the game should’ve been a cautionary tale. In Spelunky, you do die a lot. Nevertheless, I don’t want to be responsible for the death of one of the game industry’s most beloved indie developers.

It’s late April, a hot mid-afternoon day in West Hills, Calif., a neighborhood about a 45-minute drive northwest of Los Angeles. This hike took approximately an hour. The Cave of Munits stands 25ft above us and is located in a large fissure on the mountain. We knew we’d have to do some light climbing; the websites we’d read said as much. But now that I’m here, looking into the opening of Munits, I feel they sold it short. To my anxious mind, I’m about to climb El Capitan. As far as I’m concerned, it might be at 25 or 3000 feet. No matter how high you fall, falling to your death is the same.

“Wow, this really is like some actual spelunking here,” Yu says, the words stressed and labored as he pulls his body weight up.

I hear him panting. I’ve long since stopped watching – finding anything I can around me to look at instead; I don’t want to see the consequences of my negligence. Yu stops half way up to take a breather. It’s the second half of the climb where things go from bad to worse.

Spelunky creator Derek Yu

At the very least, it’s pretty easy to find handholds in the first half. This all disappears when you reach the end of Munits. You will find the rocks slippery and there are many gaps. To find leverage, you have to stretch your legs. It’s not a 90-degree climb, but I’d wager it’s pretty close. One wrong move, and that’s all she wrote. Then I wonder what she is thinking. Game InformerAlex Van Aken, video editor, and I are strong enough to bring Yu back to civilization. It is impossible to receive a cell phone signal.

It is likely that now is a good moment to inform you that Derek Yu didn’t die. Neither did I, for that matter, though I’m sure you assume as much. After Yu makes it into Munits I’ll follow her lead. We consider returning more times than we have to, as the climb can be scary and difficult.

But when I finally make it, I’m thankful we didn’t. The landscape that I have just walked through is visible to me as I turn my head before I enter the cave. We’re high above some of the other hills in the Simi Valley mountain range. The green grass and mountains that rise above the ground can be seen for miles. If you avoid looking to the left at the nearest town, it feels like you’re truly out in the wild. It’s quiet. The kind that doesn’t exist in cities. This is the kind that you will have to travel a long way in order to see.

It is – for lack of a better word – perfect. After a very bad scenario, this is the best possible view.

It feels just right. Yu created a great game. This is about the cave.

It’s perfect

It’s perfect

When Spelunky launched in 2012 – itself a remake of the 2008 freeware game of the same name, but this time financed and published by Microsoft for Xbox Live Arcade – it came at what was then, and may still be, the largest indie game movement. Hotline Miami and Fez, Journey and Spelunky all launched in the same year. Spelunky stands out against all stiff competition.

At its core, it’s a game about exploring a cave. The catch: it’s procedurally generated; no two playthroughs are the same. Further complicating matters, it’s a roguelike and brutally difficult. It’s a game you can – and must – play continuously to see everything there is to offer. You can play it continuously to see all there is. Polygon put it in their review back in 2012, “We may be playing Spelunky forever.” It’s hard to argue they’re wrong. Spelunky found a large audience quickly.

“I think when it came out, it was a new thing, that mixture of roguelike stuff and platforming,” Yu says. “I mean, really, I feel like it’s just the roguelike philosophy, but Spelunky really made it accessible to a lot of people.”

Spelunky has been very successful, according to all accounts. He doesn’t give exact numbers, but if you factor in the freeware version with the XBLA release, Yu says “millions” of people have played his game.

Spelunky, a game that people continue to talk about a decade after its original release, is still a popular choice. Naturally, the sequel was launched in 2020 to renew interest. Yu is part of this public awareness. Over the last 10 years, he’s been remarkably open about the game’s development and given numerous in-depth talks. There’s also an entire documentary by Noclip about the making-of the project. Noclip even wrote a book about the project, appropriately named SpelunkyBoss Fight Books published a 2016 book called “The Development of Spelunky” that detailed the process in great detail. Spelunky is beloved by many, as are Yu’s talks about it. I guess that’s what happens when you release a “perfect” game.

I want to interrogate that word – “perfect.” It’s loaded, inherently holding massive weight. And yet, more so than perhaps any other game, it’s the word used to describe Spelunky. It’s so synonymous that the back of Yu’s book even references it. “But how is a ‘perfect’ game made?” it asks. Find out more by reading the book. I’m here to ask Yu something else. What does this term mean for him as an artist? What is his approach to it?

“I think when I heard the word perfect, I didn’t feel like the people who said it meant perfect-perfect, like, there was absolutely nothing that could possibly be improved or changed,” Yu says, sitting atop a large rock inside Munits. “But I took it to mean that they felt like it got pretty close.”

“When I heard it, I was obviously very flattered,” he says. “But to me, it’s also a dangerous word. I think in making art, making games, and just in my everyday life, I try to – there are some pigeons behind me in this cave.”

The inside of Munits where we’re talking is almost comically beautiful. The natural staircase that leads to the cave is made of tall rocks, which are stacked one on top of another. Holes in the ceiling allow sunbeams to funnel through – as if God herself was lighting our path. The black hole in the back of our eyes is what we choose to ignore. The echo is loud and the ceiling high. It’s like we’re in our own private cathedral inside a mountain. We’re lucky, and we have the place to ourselves for the hour we’re here.

Other than these poor pigeons.

As Yu cuts himself off, behind us, deep from the back hole, we hear what I can only describe as the worst sound I’ve ever heard: the low echo of dozens, maybe hundreds of pigeons all cooing together. It’s low, otherworldly, and terrifying.

“It sounds like the pigeons are using walkie-talkies or something,” Yu says, laughing. “It’s so weird.”

Yes. It’s unlike anything I’ve heard before, ostensibly because of the cave’s shape warping the sound into something unnatural by the time it hits our ears. Sometimes, one of these pigeons will fly out from the hole and directly above our heads, into the nests or smaller crevices around us.

The conversation continues like this. After a while, we talk and then the pigeons come in. After we have finished talking, we both look at each others to vent our frustrations about the noise. Yu is able to see how this conversation goes against his plans and makes him feel about the importance of a great game.

“I guess that’s a good segue to me saying that I think it’s important to just kind of embrace imperfection and the chaos of life,” Yu says after the pigeons settle down. “And I certainly didn’t feel like Spelunky was a perfect game myself. This felt like the most successful thing we had done at that point. But I could certainly see – especially by the release of Spelunky on Xbox [360 in 2012] – that we learned so much that I definitely felt like I could do better. That we could all do better.”

Accepting his imperfections was part of the deal.

Perfect

Perfect

Yu states that the most painful mistake is the one you make first.

But it’s always there and will always be there. No matter what Yu creates, he always finds the first blemish that made it past his watchful eye as soon as it’s done.

“Up until that first mistake, it does kind of feel like you did something perfect, and when there’s one mistake, it kind of feels like this perfect thing with this one blemish on it,” Yu says. “That feels really bad.”

I think I get what he means, if only because this whole day isn’t going how I’d imagined. For months I’d planned this piece out in my mind. It went something like this: we’d show up, and the sun would be in just the right position to cast the perfect amount of shadows across the landscape. It would be a marvellous sight to see Munits. We certainly wouldn’t have to leave most of our filming equipment behind because it’s too heavy to carry up – a victim of not knowing what the actual climb is like. Yu would utter it every time he opened his mouth. No “likes,” “ums,” or half-finished thoughts and ideas. I’d go home, and the piece would fall out of my fingers. Easy.

Some of it is actually happening, to be sure. Derek is brilliant and very intelligent. Munits is beautiful. The sun isn’t doing us a ton of favors, but at the very least, it’s not raining or overcast. If you squint, everything I’d imagined is almost playing out how I wanted.

But then a pigeon flies over your head and interrupts a fantastic answer – the kind that’s never replicated once forced. You might also notice the bird droppings and bugs on the ground. Alex may crash his drone while taking aerial footage and must climb into the cave to retrieve it. The fact that I forgot my water bottle. The perfect day to make my perfect piece of art is currently decidedly flawed.

Yu has been told by many that he is a perfectionist for over ten years. But, after only 10 minutes, Yu lets us all know that Spelunky isn’t perfect. But it’s not that he’s trying to diminish his accomplishments – quite the opposite. He says that the pain of finding the first flaw is not only painful, but it’s also very distressing. But it’s going to happen. And it won’t be just one.

“Inevitably, I’ll find something else that is a little awkward,” Yu says. “And then something else. And then I’ll think about a previous game or piece of art that I made. ‘Oh yeah, there were problems with that, too.’ And then you just realize that nothing is perfect, and you start to actually appreciate some of these quote-unquote flaws as actually the human touch. That’s my personality coming through. At the time, I chose to do it this way, and that’s what I was feeling. Perhaps there was some pressure from someone, time pressure, that drove me to choose this method. The work ends up feeling more rewarding, I believe. I really just try to embrace that.”

Empower yourself to build. For many people, Spelunky might be a “perfect” game, but for Yu, there was plenty to improve upon – which is why he created Spelunky 2. As he tells it, he didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel; he wanted to build upon it. When he thinks about people’s opinion of Spelunky as “perfect,” rather than read that as it can’t get any better, Yu says he looked at it as a foundation for its sequel; the start of something better than perceived perfection.

It’s honestly a healthy way to look at the artistic process. I tell Yu that if someone called anything I’ve created “perfect,” I’d surely let it go to my head; I’d get an ego about it. I’d also be too scared to create anything again. Yu sees the problem from a different angle, being more rationale and thoughtful than me.

“I think I was just really excited about the idea of the further things that I wanted to do,” he says. “With Spelunky 1, people had no expectations. Spelunky 2 will have many expectations. So, inevitably, you’re going to disappoint people. But I felt that if people thought Spelunky 1 was a perfect game, they can keep playing that.”

You can make it work

You can make it work

I’m the first to climb down. As scary as it was going up, it’s mortifying working your way back from Munits. It feels like gravity could take my body out of control if my weight is too high. In retrospect, I’ve spent a lot of my day thinking about dying.

Today wasn’t perfect. My piece likely won’t be, either. But the pigeons, the climbing, how this whole ordeal went south in ways I never could’ve anticipated? Today was memorable, interesting, enjoyable, original, and fun because of it. It might make my job harder in the coming weeks – a lot of good quotes got ruined by pigeons – but it also beats writing another preview round-up entry. In that case, I can buy Yu’s philosophy and embrace the chaos and imperfections of life. I was able to gather some interesting anecdotes. Yu appears to be in agreement.

“This is definitely up there as far as surreal experiences go,” he says as we work our way back to civilization.

We feel exhausted and stressed as we trek the route that we took. Conversations and bodies seem slower now than just a few hours earlier. Interview questions quickly turn into small talk about the trip’s strangeness. Although it was poorly planned, there were some positive aspects. Imperfect, you might say. Perfect in its own right. It all depends on your perspective.

What exactly does perfection look like? A few weeks ago, I thought I’d have an answer by this point. Yu made a “perfect” game. I was sure he would be able to help me. I don’t think he did, but I don’t think that matters. I don’t think perfection means any one thing so much as it means something different to each person. Spelunky could be the perfect game for you. For Yu, it isn’t. But that’s okay. Nothing is actually perfect – even if people say it is. It’s just a matter of embracing that fact.

“I think a lot of indie developers – especially when they’re starting out – I think it’s easy to think about the game you’re working on as like, ‘This is it. This is what will make or break my career. This has gotta be my magnum opus,’” Yu says. “It’s easy to get into this cycle of working on one thing forever and ever because your skills grow as you’re developing, and what you worked on a year ago may not look as good to you now as it did back then.

“I think it’s important to realize that it’s fine. It’s important to think about the world in this manner. It’s okay if it’s not perfect. It’s okay if what you worked on at the beginning of the game development [cycle] is not as good as what you’re working on at the end of development. You just find a way to make it work.”

Again, it’s all a matter of perspective.