Spelunky 2 has a cloning gun, flamethrower and turkeys
Mossmouth doubles down on a game about stories and friendship.
During last night's State of Play event, Derek Yu revealed a 15th September release date for Spelunky 2, the long-awaited sequel for the game that killed a billion pugs and launched a million roguelites.
Spelunky is a procedural dungeon-running platformer absolutely stuffed with secrets. Part of its appeal is that its clockwork world is made from simple pieces but can go wrong very explosively in ways that always make sense in retrospect. Thomasina was wrong: you can stir things apart. You just can't do anything about them. Actually, maybe Thomasina was right.
Anyway, isn't it lovely to have a release date? More importantly, though, Derek Yu's fantastic trailer - truly one of the best I have ever seen for a forthcoming game - chose to foreground what he thinks was special about the first Spelunky and what has been done to deepen those things this time around.
And as Yu has it, Spelunky is a game about stories and friendship - the stories of things that happen to you on each run, and the friends you share those stories and the game itself with. So expect more complex, richer elements, such as branching paths and what look like a greater focus on set-piece puzzles. Expect fluid dynamics that sees lava and water dropping from one pool into the rest of the world when you bomb the bottom of a basin. And expect collectable characters who hang around at a sort of hub world to provide a sense of camaraderie - I think that's what he was getting at anyway.
There's a wonderful bit with collecting turkeys and a wonderful bit with a cloning gun and a wonderful bit with a flamethrower and - oh, it's all wonderful. Spelunky 2 will hit PlayStation 4 on 15th September, then. It's also coming to PC. When? Nobody knows!
