I never knew about Spelunker until I came across a video of it recently. Being that I love the hell out of 8-bit era action puzzle games, I wanted to play it.
However, this is far from the near masterpiece that is Solomon’s Key.
To start, the game has great level design and it looks fantastic. I was really excited when I fired this up.
However, my enthusiasm was completely wrecked by the terrible mechanics and controls. The in-game physics are wonky at best and it almost feels like this was deliberately designed to infuriate you from the get go.
Still, I tried to get passed the learning curve but the mechanics are just so shit that I eventually gave up.
So I didn’t play this through to completion or had to stop because I found myself at some impossible roadblock. I just got burnt out trying to make the character on the screen do what I wanted him to do.
In the end, this had the makings and level design to be something incredibly fun. Instead, it’s a really wonderful looking bag of dicks.
Rating: 4.5/10
Pairs well with: other action puzzle games for the original Nintendo and earlier Atari systems.