Spelunky
Derek Yu's platformer with random levels and permadeath.
Where Spelunky comes up3 episodes and tests
GCreator of Game Maker's Toolkit, game designer and video essayist testThe History of Every Video Game Genre
Gcreator of Game Maker's Toolkit testHow Games Do Destruction
Gcreator of Game Maker's Toolkit, with the designer of Islanders and Thronefall testHow to find amazing game ideasSpelunky crossed Super Mario style platforming with roguelike random levels and permadeath, aiming to fix flaws in both genres. Roguelikes later tied for the most popular genre of 2025, with about 20 releases. Its tile-grid destruction, with neighbouring sprites swapped to hide rough edges, also shaped later games. Lesson: blend two formats by fixing each one's weakness, and the result can seed a whole category.
- 1Take Mario-style platformingDerek Yu's starting point
- 2Add roguelike rulesRandom levels and permadeath
- 3Spelunky becomes its own genreNot a copy of either parent
- 4Others reuse its rulesSlay the Spire adds deckbuilding
- 5Balatro and Luck Be a LandlordRoguelike tied top genre in 2025
From Mark Brown's genre history
What was said about Spelunky
1How Spelunky combined platforming with roguelikes
Derek Yu merged Mario-style platforming with roguelike structure to make Spelunky. Yu took Super Mario style platforming and added the random levels and permadeath of a roguelike. The result was a new kind of game rather than a copy of either parent.
Mark Brown's genre history frames it as picking two things you love and merging them. A second reading is that the mix cured the flaws of both genres, platformers and roguelikes.
Spelunky's rules were reused to build roguelikes in other genres. Other makers applied Spelunky's random levels and permadeath to new genres. Slay the Spire mixed roguelike with deckbuilding, which led to Luck Be a Landlord and Balatro.
Roguelike went from a niche RPG offshoot to tying for the most popular genre of 2025, with about 20 releases that year.
2Spelunky's tile-based destruction
Spelunky removes grid tiles and swaps neighbouring sprites to hide rough edges. Its destruction is the simplest form: tiles are removed from a grid. Swapping neighbouring sprites smooths the blocky look that removal would otherwise leave.
Shrinking the grid gives finer destruction. Noita goes down to single pixels, and extending the grid into 3D gives Minecraft's voxels, which many games smooth with algorithms like marching cubes. Voxel terrain also appears in No Man's Sky, 7 Days to Die, Astroneer and Donkey Kong Bananza.
3Similar examples from other apps
These are about other apps, not Spelunky: examples from the same sources that help explain it.
Crypt of the NecroDancer fixed roguelike randomness by making the game about skill. Ryan Clark thought roguelikes leaned too hard on randomness, so he made a dungeon crawler built around player skill. It became Crypt of the NecroDancer.
Jonas Tyroller's team used the same approach: they disliked the growing complexity of city builders and made Islanders as their fix. The common thread is that a complaint about a genre makes a good starting point, as with Spelunky's blend of platformer and roguelike.
The History of Every Video Game Genre
Yu combined Super Mario style platforming with roguelike random levels and permadeath. Others then applied the same rules to new genres.
Derek Yu merged Mario-style platforming with roguelike structure to make Spelunky. Yu took Super Mario style platforming and added the random levels and permadeath of a roguelike. The result was a new kind of game rather than a copy of either parent.
Mark Brown's genre history frames it as picking two things you love and merging them. A second reading is that the mix cured the flaws of both genres, platformers and roguelikes.
Spelunky's rules were reused to build roguelikes in other genres. Other makers applied Spelunky's random levels and permadeath to new genres. Slay the Spire mixed roguelike with deckbuilding, which led to Luck Be a Landlord and Balatro.
Roguelike went from a niche RPG offshoot to tying for the most popular genre of 2025, with about 20 releases that year.
How Games Do Destruction
Removes tiles from a grid and swaps neighbouring sprites to hide rough edges.
Spelunky removes grid tiles and swaps neighbouring sprites to hide rough edges. Its destruction is the simplest form: tiles are removed from a grid. Swapping neighbouring sprites smooths the blocky look that removal would otherwise leave.
Shrinking the grid gives finer destruction. Noita goes down to single pixels, and extending the grid into 3D gives Minecraft's voxels, which many games smooth with algorithms like marching cubes. Voxel terrain also appears in No Man's Sky, 7 Days to Die, Astroneer and Donkey Kong Bananza.
How to find amazing game ideas
It blended platformers and roguelikes to cure the flaws of both genres.
Derek Yu merged Mario-style platforming with roguelike structure to make Spelunky. Yu took Super Mario style platforming and added the random levels and permadeath of a roguelike. The result was a new kind of game rather than a copy of either parent.
Mark Brown's genre history frames it as picking two things you love and merging them. A second reading is that the mix cured the flaws of both genres, platformers and roguelikes.
Crypt of the NecroDancer fixed roguelike randomness by making the game about skill. Ryan Clark thought roguelikes leaned too hard on randomness, so he made a dungeon crawler built around player skill. It became Crypt of the NecroDancer.
Jonas Tyroller's team used the same approach: they disliked the growing complexity of city builders and made Islanders as their fix. The common thread is that a complaint about a genre makes a good starting point, as with Spelunky's blend of platformer and roguelike.
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