As of this moment, I’ve died 156 times on this PC alone. I have two other installs with another 100 deaths between them. Yet despite infinite failure, I keep returning to try again.

Spelunky is a free 2D platformer inspired by Rogue and its ilk. You’re an adventurer – in this case, a Fedora-wearing Indiana Jones type with a bullwhip and ophidiophobia – and your goal is to delve as deeply as possible into a cave, to collect gold, steal golden idols, avoid traps, kill enemies and rescue people. The scenery changes after five levels or so, and the enemies shift from spiders and bats to monkeys and man-eating plants. I’m guessing it changes twice more after that, but I’ve yet to reach further than level seven.

Like every other Rogue-like, Spelunky is hard. Since starting to write this the death count has reached 165. Yet I keep returning, just like I did with other platform games N and Punishment, and the racing game Trackmania. I compulsively want to do better, gather more gold and reach higher levels.

Being a Rogue-like means there’s greater depth here than most 2D platformers. You start each game with bombs and ropes, letting you blast paths through the cave walls or climb back to higher levels. Travelling deeper, you discover shops selling new items, or find chests containing free tools. Parachutes, springy boots, sticky bombs, bows and arrows, a compass, and other more outlandish tools aid your quest and add variety. I find that you’re better off relying on pick-ups than purchases, but the stores are fun all the same. I’m particularly fond of those that are equipped with giant, tossable dice, where you can gamble some of your gold.

The range of objects and enemies allows you to make fun choices.

Example #1: Each shop is run by a shopkeeper. If you don’t feel like paying for what he’s selling, you can steal it. Pick up and run away with any of the items and he’ll chase after you with his shotgun, and won’t stop till your dead. Light a bomb in his store and he’ll immediately scream “Terrorist!” and gun you down.

Example #2: Levels occasionally begin with a message. “I hear snakes. I hate snakes!” indicates that the level contains a snake pit. “The dead are restless,” indicates that the level is crawling with zombies. But sometimes you’ll enter a level that’s shrouded in darkness, the message prompting you to light a flare. While your pockets have plenty of space for bombs and rope, you can only carry one thing in your hand at a time. This is bad. The big money is earned by carrying an idol to the exit and health is regained by carrying a person there, so flares pose a challenge. Getting an idol to the exit on a level that’s dark means alternating, carrying your flare forward to deposit it in a safe place before returning in to the thickening darkness to grab the idol and bring it forward. This process repeats, moving the flare forward bit by bit, ensuring a safe path before returning for idol.

The computer is providing a different adventure every time, remixing the same elements to create a different scenario.

Example #3: The game I just started ended about 15 seconds after it began when I opened a chest to reveal an already armed bomb. It promptly exploded in my face.

I’ve been intentionally vague about one element. The people you can rescue in the caves are, more specifically, women. You find them standing still and screaming endlessly for help. Carrying them successfully to the exit point earns you a kiss, and this kiss gives you a health point.

I don’t want to be that person. The person who reads race or gender issues into everything. The women in Spelunky aren’t a comment on women in general, but a fond reference to characters like Princess Peach from the Mario series: the eternal damsel requiring your rescue. Spelunky shows fondness for a lot of games; those chomping plants are similarly familiar.

Still, it’s worth noting. If you set a woman down on your journey to the exit, she’ll run crying back and forth. You can use her as a weapon, tossing her at enemies to kill them. Some of the shops you encounter contain nothing but a woman from whom you can pay to receive a kiss, and thus a health point. Should you pick up and run off with her, the shopkeeper – or, I guess, in this case her pimp – will run after you just as if you’d stolen some shoes. The women are more Willie Scott than Marion Ravenwood.

Like N and Punishment and Trackmania before it, Spelunky has become the game I turn to in between other things. While writing this, whenever I pause to think, I alt-tab over to it and play a little more. Throughout the day I’ve been playing it while watching television, while browsing, while talking. The game fills every crack it can find.

Hey, I just reached the next stage! I can now tell you it features ice, abominable snowmen and spaceships. I almost immediately fell to my death.

As far as I can fathom, the crux of these games is this: I fail a lot, and every time I fail I know explicitly why. It’s “I should have stood still during that attack,” or “I should have tossed the bomb sooner.” I know what I did wrong and reasonably come to the conclusion that I won’t do it again. Next time, I’ll toss the bomb faster.

Except, the levels are procedurally generated, so next time the situation is different. That giant spider is no longer there. I don’t even use a bomb. I’m set upon by bats. I die in a completely different way.

And again I’ll think, “Oh, I should have used my whip. I’ll do it differently next time.”

I am constantly convinced of my own ability to improve, but I’m never given the opportunity to overcome the specifics of my last failure. So I’m never fulfilled, but constantly surprised.

[Note: In its original form, this post was accompanied by a 'death counter' that ran in a column alongside the article. It charted how my number of deaths stretched into the hundreds as I wrote, and nicely illustrated death's importance to the game and my obsession with playing it. Unfortunately, the HTML/CSS to design that chart was messy and fiddly within WordPress, and it discplayed incorrectly in most browsers. I've now removied it.]