To complete Spelunky, you just have to survive 15 randomly generated levels and then trick the final boss into killing itself. To get to hell, though, you have to perform a series of specific rituals in a specific order, using unique objects that crop up in different places each time, and then defeat the boss in a particularly audacious way to use his death as a stepping stone to the underworld.

• Somewhere in the mines there’ll be a Golden Key. Somewhere else in the mines there’s a Golden Chest. You have to pick one up and bring it to the other to unlock the chest and obtain the Udjat Eye.
• Somewhere in the jungle, there’s a door buried behind solid rock. The only way to know which bit of solid rock is by getting close enough to it for the Udjat Eye to blink, faster the closer you are. If you find it, and if you have enough explosives to blow it open, you reach The Black Market.
• The Black Market is full of shops selling a random selection of equipment, but in the very back, there’s a shop that sells something you can’t find anywhere else: The Ankh of Resurrection. It costs more than any other item in the game, an amount of money it’s hard to acquire this early, and all it does is give you one extra life. And if you want to get to Hell, you can’t use it.
• Until, somewhere in the ice caverns, you find the Moai Head. It’s an impenetrable stone statue, but the next item you need is inside it: the Hedjet. The Moai Head is inscribed with the symbol of the Ankh, a hint at the horrible secret: the only way in is to kill yourself. The Ankh resurrects you inside, but is lost forever.
• Beneath the ice caverns you’ll find the temple, and somewhere on the first level of the temple you’ll find Anubis, a flying god with a heat-seeking psionic death staff whose projectiles can pass through walls. Kill him. Take the Staff.
• Somewhere on the next level of the temple will be a Golden Door. Combining the Hedjet with the Staff creates the key, the key opens the door, and the door leads you to the City of Gold.
• The City of Gold used to be the secret, one of the most elaborate in gaming. I wrote a whole feature about it. But in this version of Spelunky, it’s just another step in the path to Hell. Somewhere in its solid gold walls is the Book of the Dead. Take it and Anubis II, the undead version of the god you just killed, will rise. He can fly through walls and summon infinite skeletons and follow you between levels.
• Kill Anubis II, make it to Olmec, the boss of the regular game, and the Book of the Dead will start… chomping. Find the place it chomps fastest. Find a way to make Olmec stomp there, until he sinks into the lava. Stand on Olmec’s head as he sinks, and walk through the Door to Hell just above the lava’s surface.

And that gets you to level 1. Of Hell, the most dangerous world of one of the most danger-obsessed games around. Hell isn’t just a secret level, it’s a secret world, as big as any of the main ones. And at the end is an even bigger boss. Only by completing it and defeating him do you actually escape, and that’s what I did for the first time last night.

The interesting thing about this insane process is that I never read a guide to it. I heard about each bit of the puzzle by word of mouth, a stray screenshot, an accidentally read spoiler, or a Let’s Play that revealed more than I thought it would.

It’s a weird modern equivalent of folklore, an elaborate story about secrets and artifacts that’s passed from person to person by excitement. And those of us who pursue it have memorised every illogical step of the improbable tale. Some of it we’ve tried for ourselves, some of it many times. But until you make it all the way through, part of it is still legend, and that’s tantalising.

Each day, Spelunky generates one set of levels that’s the same for every player. Each day, we play them. Some of us make videos of our attempts. You can browse mine above (click the listy icon in the top left), or see everyone’s on the blog we set up at https://spelunkyexplorers.wordpress.com/.

On the rest of this post are the earliest dailies we posted.More info!

The scores for each person’s attempt are ranked, of course, but I don’t really care about that. The reason it’s so fascinating to me is that it takes a generative game – one that’s different every time – and gives it one of the most appealing things about pre-scripted games: being able to compare notes with your friends.

And these days, we can do more than compare notes – we can record our playthroughs and share them on YouTube. Eurogamer editor Tom Bramwell is doing this every day, and I plan to whenever I have time. Here are both our attempts at today’s daily, mine first. It’s quite fun to compare your own try with someone else’s level by level – I switched between these to see how we handled each differently.

Dailies feel different to play, too. There’s the tension of only having one shot at a playthrough that is somehow important, then in our case there’s the pressure of knowing you’ll be putting this up for all to see, and then there’s the really nice sense of community in knowing that everyone’s going to be facing the same obstacles and treasures.

Yesterday’s daily had a dark level at the end of the mines, one of the worst things that can happen in the mines. But right at the entrance was a shop, and the shop was selling a jetpack, the best item in the game. It was great realising I happened to have the cash on hand to buy it, and wondering who else might have got here a few thousand short. And of those who could afford it, how would they get on with total mobility in a near-blind environment?

I made it through slowly but safely, then threw myself into a pitcher plant in the jungle.

In the videos above, one of the jungle levels is full of the living dead, and I had a tricky but fun fight with a vampire that won me his cape but cost me two bombs. Tom Bramwell reaches the same fight from a different side of the level, and because of that he has a shotgun when he does. So his fight is rather shorter.

So, I love dailies, and I think the feature is genius – both as a genuinely valuable thing for players, and as a neat marketing tool for the game. I’m expecting this Steam release to completely crush the Xbox one in sales, despite being so much later, just because it encourages word-spreading so nicely.

The one thing I don’t like is the scoring. This is the one game where I care enough that I could get competitive about it among my friends, but the rankings are meaningless at the moment. They’re just how much money you had when you died – a value which oscillates drastically depending on the placement of shops and stuff.

If I engage with the scoring system, then once I’ve gathered loads of treasure and find an awesome shop full of the most exciting items in the game, the smart move is to just kill myself on some spikes and stop playing – ending with a vast sum of money. The tools I could buy do aid survival, which in turn could lead to more profits, but giving the extreme unpredictability of Spelunky, numerically speaking it’s not worth the risk.

But that’s a terrible way to play, and I refuse to do it. So my run today, which was pretty good, got me a pathetic score. My run yesterday, which was worse, got me a huge score and I placed 112th in the world – just because I died shortly before getting to a shop.

A simple tweak would fix this: rank everyone by progress, then by score. So if you got to a further level than me, you’re higher in the charts. But if we got to the same level, then the richer player ranks higher. That way it would sync up with the most enjoyable way to play, which is prioritising further adventuring over wealth-on-death.

Update

I’ll just add these here as I do them. This is a short one, with commentary, like “It was a terrible terrible mistake! It was a terrible mistake!”

Things I should have done differently:

– Could have sacrificed the idol instead of selling it, for a jewel-excreting monkey that would have made me more money as I scoured the level for ages.

– Should have bought the Mattock first, and used it to both mine gems and build stairways to let me get back up without ropes. Didn’t know I’d get the Udjat Eye though.

– Best way to kill that spider would have been to drop the other side of it, crouch and roll a bomb into its web. I did see the bat that damaged me ahead of time, but forgot that it would also knock me back, which of course saved and activated the spider.

– Could have also Mattocked through the wall above and avoided the spider, but its jewels and sticky jar were worth going after.

• Mines 1, first crate: it’s a jetpack! Holy shit, I’m sorted.
• Mines 4: jetpack for sale! Could have bought one anyway.
• Jungle 2: I’m rich, but low on bombs when I uncover the Black Market.
• Before going through, I spend my last bombs mining gems.
• Pray for bombs on sale.
• First shop has 36 bombs on sale.
• Buy 24, then see if I can find more cash.
• There’s a giant frog. I can boomerang it for profit!
• I boomerang it twice, and on the second throw, jump to catch it.
• The boomerang flies underneath me.
• It hits a shopkeeper in the face.
• Shopstorm.
• After six near-death experiences, I get the last two shopkeepers in the Ankh hole and bomb them to death.
• I loot the shops: 54 bombs, jetpack, shotgun.
• The Ghost shows up.
• Grab the Ankh, bomb through to the exit, leave.

• Ice Caves 2: I find the Easter Island head.
• I perform the Ankh ritual to get the Hedjet, losing my shotgun in the process.
• Tomb 1: I encounter the Pharaoh, no shotgun to fight him.
• No Pitcher’s Mitt either, only short-range sticky bombs.
• It’s tough. I’m ducking Death Blocks, hopping Tribesmen, teetering on tiki traps, all while a cloud of psionic death floats towards me, and I figure out ways to fight back.
• Finally blow a path through the walls to him, and just spam: 4, 5 bombs all in his general direction, using the jetpack to get different heights.
• I jet over. Just some blood, wrappings, and the psionic death staff. Now to never, ever use it in combat, and pray I find the golden door before something kills me.

• Tomb 2: is pitch fucking black.
• Trying to keep both the staff and the torch in play is a nerve-shredding nightmare.
• At one point, I can’t help it: I drop down with the staff and run straight into an angry shopkeeper. I have to use it.
• The bubble grabs the shopkeeper, slams him into the ceiling, mashes him against the wall, then grabs a priest, shreds him, grabs the resurrected priest, shreds him, and flings his corpse at me.
• I am terrified of this fucking staff. But I’m at the exit.
• I still haven’t found the golden door, and this is the second to last level it could be on. Do I dare explore a pitch black tomb level to look for it?
• Nope.

• Tomb 3: this is it, my last chance to find the golden door. I work carefully but quickly, making snap decisions and safe calls, but brute forcing my way into every chamber of the level. The golden door is nowhere. I’ve taken this goddamn psionic death staff all the way here for nothing. I killed myself for nothing.
• Tomb 4: endgame. Might as well try for completion. Dropping this fucking staff though, don’t want to accidentally use it.
• Jetpack up and throw a rope to hang from while I plan. Gather gold and bombs from the rafters. Plan. Plan more.
• I have a plan.
• I try my plan.
• In the space of about two minutes, I take damage from pretty much every enemy type in the game. I’m down to 2 health. A tribesman’s jumping towards me. The staff is between us. I can’t safely whip him. I can’t lose this last buffer health point. I gulp. I grab the staff. I fire.
• The bubble grabs the tribesman and smashes him into the ceiling. Olmec stomps towards me. The bubble drops the bloodied corpse on the floor, then heads straight for me with blood-chilling speed.
• I am never, ever, ever using this staff again.
• It misses me. It’s going for a frog. It kills the frog.
• Olmec is above me.
• I jet away. I drop the staff. I enact the plan.
• The plan…

• …works.
• Everything is dead. The exit is open.
• I’ve done it! I head to the exit.
• I head back.
• I pick up the staff.
• I head to the exit.
• I am a wreck. My pulse has been pounding since the pitch-black temple level, and I’m only noticing it now.
• I always loved the ending of Spelunky on PC – simple, but hugely rewarding. It’s the same here, but with a difference that gives me a little start of joy: my name! I’m in the special thanks!
• With shaky hands, I pour myself a drink.
• Total playthrough time: 31 minutes. Score: $210,000.

It’s a network of shops where, if you haven’t angered any shopkeeps thus far, you can buy almost every item in the game, and one that’s available nowhere else: the Ankh. The Ankh gives you a second life, and costs $50,000. It’s hard to earn $50,000. I have $120,000.

Before I get it, I want all the other equipment I’ll need. Most of it’s on the middle floor, but there are enemies: two boomerang tribesmen watch over the entrance to the shops, and a snail blows acid bubbles up the ladder that could help me bypass them.

I buy a shotgun from the top floor, then drop down to blow all the tribesmen away in one shot. I miss. A boomerang knocks me out of the air, nailbitingly close to a fatal pitcher plant below, and onto the snail. The snail is crushed, but the tribesmen are wild: by the time I pick myself up, one has thrown himself to his death and the other has jumped into the shops. Now he prowls them slowly, looking for me.

This is tense. I’m dying to shoot him, but it’s madness to fire in the direction of a shopkeeper. I just have to tail him at a safe distance and buy the items I need as I pass them. I’m reasonably confident he won’t turn round – and even if he does, he dropped his boomerang outside.

There’s a boomerang on sale in this shop actually. The tribesman walks up to it. He picks it up.

For a split second, I am amused. He’s going to buy a new boomerang! Silly tribesman, you don’t own material wealth!

Then my internal simulation of Spelunky’s interacting systems kicks in, and I see the next few seconds flash before my eyes with pure horror.

I run.

I jump onto the ladder, scramble up, dive away from the top floor shops, duck behind a mound of earth and cling to the ground. Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Christ.

For a second, nothing happens.

Then the Black Market explodes.

All nine shopkeepers hurl themselves into the air and start firing their shotguns in random directions. They kill the tribesman. They kill two other tribesmen. They kill frogs, pitchers, snails. One kills the slave he was selling, another kills his own dog. Two of them throw themselves to their deaths in the fury. Four of them throw themselves into a pit, where their bursts of buckshot cut each other to ribbons.

What happened was: the Tribesman walked out of the shop. He walked out of the shop with the shopkeeper’s boomerang in his hand, and he walked out of the shop without paying for it.

Shopkeepers don’t know, much less understand, who stole from them or damaged their store. Any crime, of any kind, is cause for an indiscriminate rampage that kills everything in line of sight, and a lot more besides. When that happens in the Black Market, there’s a term for it. It’s the shopstorm.

When the blasts quiet down, I crawl slowly out of my hiding place and walk carefully through the empty shops, collecting everything for free.

I find one surviving shopkeeper hopping madly around the Ankh, bouncing on the bodies of the colleagues he’s killed. I throw one of the 35 sticky bombs I’ve shoplifted at him, and he detonates a second later. I take the Ankh and the heaps of gold the shopkeepers dropped.

In four levels’ time, I’ll use the climbing gloves I stole to cling to a wall in the ice caves, directly below a collapsing platform that will fall onto me and hit the jetpack I stole, causing it to explode and kill me, wasting the Ankh I stole. But all I’m thinking right now is wow, I’m still incredibly rich.

Lots of Spelunky’s mechanics are simple in principle but really, really, really hard to reliably master. When figuring out what route is worth taking, factor in the risk you might screw up and get hit by something.

Sometimes it’s worth a bomb to avoid that risk. Sometimes it’s worth leaving treasure behind. The option that gets you to the exit with the least chance of harm is usually the one that ultimately leads to the most money, bombs, and kissing. The option that involves these things can go to hell:

Spiders: sprint under them, turn around, and whip them when they land – they always fall directly down initially, and pause on the ground.
Bats: whip then jump. Lets you intercept them higher, getting a more horizontal angle at them, and ensures you’re already whipping when they reach you.
If you screw up: ropes are a good last resort way to hit something directly above you.
Big spiders: hold up and throw a bomb into the web below them.
Dart traps: if you’re short of something to drop, tiny critters like rats work. Failing that, dropping a rope down works. Failing that, whip just before you fall into its line of fire, and you’ll bat the arrow out of the air.

If it’s gonna cost you a rope or bomb to get to a crate, do it. I do it even if it’s going to cost me two, because 80% of the time it’s three bombs or three ropes. The rest of the time, it’s either something amazing (Cape!) or something fun to play with (Freeze Ray).

I have basically the same policy for ladies, men and pugs. The better you get at avoiding ultra-fatal stuff like spikes, the more useful an extra heart is, and the more likely you are to be able to save someone without losing a health point doing it. I just lost SEVEN hearts in a catastrophic chain reaction set off by an unexpected skeleton in the ice caverns, and went on to reach the final boss (7 levels later). Who squished me.

Buying kisses is also totally ethical and totally worth it early on. The price increases as the game goes on, but not nearly as harshly as it used to in the PC version – retail smooching is certainly still worth it in the jungle.

Unless you know for sure there’s no shop or kissing parlour lower than the idol plinth. If there is, the boulder will hit it, you’ll get the blame and shopkeepers will hound you forever.

In the jungle, gold idols are worth it, bone idols are worth it if they’re near the exit. In the ice caverns, idols are worth it if you have a clear escape route. In Egypt, get the girl to safety first.

The gold key and chest in the mines get you an artifact that lets you see gems and stuff embedded in the rock. Most gem types are worth more than a bomb (definitely rubies and sapphires), so once you have this, you can start bomb-mining. If you last more than a few levels, you’re liable to encounter a shop selling bombs to turn your earnings back into a way to make more money. It’s super efficient!

Doing this, I generally end up with 25-45 bombs by the time I reach the last set of levels. This is very handy in the last set of levels. It’s also very handy if you ever find the city of gold. And it’s very handy for the final boss.

I reckon it goes Jetpack > Shotgun > Cape > Springy Boots > Pickaxe > Bombs > Boomerang > Spike Shoes > Compass > Ropes. Mystery gifts are worth it if you can afford it after everything else. Anything else I don’t buy. In general, stuff you have to hold in your hands isn’t super valuable because it makes rescuing people incredibly awkward and time consuming.

It’s hilarious, tense, maddening and ridiculous on a whole new level – everything matters more when someone else is kinda depending on you. It is really hard to avoid friendly fire, so I reckon two careful spelunkers is the optimal number for fun. Unfortunately you can’t play online.

In co-op, those coffins contain friends who died on previous levels. In single player, they contain interesting people! They’ll help you out for one level, then you can play as them in future. I just got a guy with a lime green sombrero, and he is bringing me great fortune.

PS. I wrote this big feature about why Spelunky is awesome, and talked to Derek about the future of randomised games, in the past:

The text of it is now online, and the future happened.