Mods:Spelunky Wiki:BJAODN/Modding Requests

Wherein ideas are compiled for the benefit of aspiring Spelunky modders. Note that bugs are listed elsewhere.

Suggestions

Sell Damsels to Kissing Booths

• Would require Damsels to spawn normally in levels that generate kissing booths.
• Would need event handling in case the damsel was saved, as well as the damsel bought from the kissing booth both taken to the level exit.

-RS (Aug/19/2010)

Multiple Held Item slots

I have a thing against held items like the Mattock. Since you need to grab the damsel or the idol all the times, I found it quite pointless to take care of the machete, mattock, and sometimes even the pistol. While with the pistol there's this interesting balance between a good weapon and the risk of juggling too much, the same cannot be said for the machete and the mattock - these became worthless after I've played a bit. Would it be too much if Spelunky could carry a weapon and an item at the same time? After all games like NetHack allows for a huge inventory, and you can pull out whatever tools whenever you need them. If this can be done, then a middling weapon like the Machete will finally find its use as a slight but meaningful upgrade to the whip.
-Gabriel (May 23, 2010)

Toggle Inventory items

The ability to equip/unequip various item such as: bomb paste and pitchers mit and spike shoes. -TL (Feb/08/2010)

Add Fall Damage protection for Spring Shoes

You may or may not have implemented this; When wearing the spring shoes make the threshold for taking falling damage a little higher. After all, you're wearing something that should absorb shock.
-TL (Feb/08/2010)

All of the above suggestions were implemented as optional features in the YASM mod.

Drop Items/Make sticky bombs ignore Damsels

2 Suggestions:

1. A button that lets you just drop things
2. When you're holding a damsel and throw/drop a sticky bomb, it shouldn't stick to the damsel. I keep forgetting it happens and getting killed when I run away from my drop point.
   

-MrEntity) Feb/15/2011)

Mod the Ice Caves

The Ice Cave area (Area 3) needs to be completely revamped. The problems with the area right now are threefold:

1. It doesn't fit into the rest of the game. The mechanics, enemies, and level design in the Ice Cave area do not appear anywhere else in the game. It is the only area with yetis, UFOs, or a bottomless level. Additionally, it is the only level to be designed as a several floating "islands" of blocks/tiles, rather than corridors, as Areas 1, 2, and 4 are. The other levels have a simple progression: Area 1 introduces game mechanics (enemies, traps, platforms), Area 2 introduces more challenging versions of those mechanics (the instant-death spear traps, more enemies with complex movement patterns, water, etc.) and Area 4 combines those elements (it contains, for instance, both the arrow and spear traps of Areas 1 and 2). Yet Area 3 stands out as completely abandoning the earlier mechanics, introducing new ones, and then abandoning those in the next area. Which leads to problem 2.
2. It changes the rules. For the rest of the game, the goal is, roughly to get to the bottom of the level. However you reach the bottom "corridor," as it were, you should be able to get to the door from there. Area 3 does not. Area 3 depends on the player managing to reach the bottom in such a way as to be able to reach the door without falling. This makes the cape and jetpack, already incredibly powerful items, nearly essential, particularly without a compass. In the narrow, trap-filled corridors of Area 1, 2, and 4, the jetpack is powerful, but not game-breaking. In Area 3 it allows players to more or less skip entire levels. Where the rest of Spelunky encourages exploration (within the time limit), Area 3 encourages players to reach the end as quickly as possible, due to the abundance of instant-death mechanics in the area. This is the basis of problem 3.
3. It isn't fun. The rest of Spelunky asks players to rely on their wits and reflexes to survive. It expects players to die often, getting a little bit farther each play as they learn the mechanics. Players may be killed by, for example, the unexpected movement patterns of the frogs in Area 2, but after learning them they can advance. Area 3 doesn't allow this. Area 3 depends far too heavily on luck to survive. There is no way to learn the pattern of a bottomless pit. Area 3 is a tedious break in the Spelunky's otherwise well-paced difficulty curve, and even for experienced players represents a dull period of rope-climbing and leaps of faith (unless one has the cape or jetpack) between fun areas. Future versions of the game should replace the ice caves entirely, or if they keep them, let them actually build on the mechanics of earlier areas. (Ice and yetis would actually be an interesting new level of challenge if the level design were similar to Areas 1 and 2. Being thrown into a spear-trap by a yeti would be frustrating, but less so than falling off the level because you guessed wrong as to the door's location).
   

- Marvin (January 12, 2011)

Grappling Hook Item

Allows you to grapple the ceiling and swing, Bionic Commando style.You should also be able to lower or raise yourself, so it could replace the ropes and allow you to carefully lower yourself down a steep fall.

Mines

Touch them and after a split-second they explode. They're triggered by anything, though, so maybe a pack of mines to drop behind you would be neat.

Bodyguards

Buy one at a shop, and they'll follow you and shoot enemies with a pistol.

Wristwatch

A low-price item that would let you see the time before the ghost spawned on the HUD.

Vault

Kinda-sorta-psuedo-semi like the vaults in nethack, they would be closed off rooms filled with gold, as well as an armed enemy of some kind.

More level themes

Ideas: Volcano: Would have a similar layout to an ice cave level, but instead of a bottomless pit it would be lava. Lots of fire-themed traps, like a trap that shoots about 3 lit bombs upon seeing movement, and a rising lava idol trap. Lake: A mostly underwater section with sharks and crabs. Would have traps themed on pushing you, like a gust trap, which would send you flying to the side, or a whirlpool idol trap, which would stay on screen for a few seconds and try to suck you and other objects into it, and if you get sucked in you die. City: An area with multiple shops on each level, kind of a way to stock up on supplies mid-game. Would have shops selling things like idols and a 'mystery shop', where you could get a fully random item. Could be skipped, I guess, to make life easier for thieves.

Mod the Dice House

You should only able to pick up dice before playing the game and when playing the game you should only be able to pick up dice that have not been rolled, because I just got killed by accidentally picking up the wrong die after rolling the first pretty much right on top of the other one. Also instead of down + action throwing something (it's not really dropping, just tossing it to the ground) it should actually drop it, just straight downwards, this is the one thing that annoys me most, also it should probably not make damsels start flailing unless they were already doing so.
- Anonymous

• I second this! I have had too many deaths by accidentally picking up the die. Being able to only pick up the die you haven't rolled is much needed. Furthermore when you "drop" an item (down + action) inside a shop, it won't affect anything. E.G. If you put a down a damsel inside the kissing booth she won't become frantic and run out of the shop, and/or if you place down an item in a shop it can't "hit" the shopkeeper, thus making the shopkeeper angry in either scenario. - TL
  
• It be nice to have a dedicated drop button. Push this button to drop whatever you're holding with no impulse.

Enemies attack Shopkeepers

It would be cool if yetis and cavemen did attack storekeepers as well. Taking a stunned yeti or caveman to a store and leaving him there until he gets up and kills the sales man would be a new way of robbing it then. Going even further, there could be yeti or caveman hunters in the next level, and you would not be wanted by police, since they don't know it was you, they think it was the yeti/caveman... In the other hand the stores would have bodyguards that wouldn't allow you to walk inside carrying any object. They could even keep your bombs while you are in there.

Parachutes Activate Arrow Traps

Deployed parachutes should set off arrow traps.
-Anon

Advanced Water/Lava Physics

For example, jumping into water would displace it, bombing the walls would make it flow, etc. It would be especially cool if quickly flowing lava could melt bricks and kill enemies. And then maybe water flowing onto a man eating plant would make it grow, or maybe let water drown non-aquatic enemies (as well as yourself).
-Anonymous Guy

Make the Ghost Optional

PLEASE MAKE THE TIME LIMIT GHOST OPTIONAL! Not everyone can appreciate time limits and it discourages exploration. Not saying to get rid of it, just make an option. Even an unlockable would be better than 2min on every level.

• I agree with the above slightly but I think that just adding more time is more appropriate, the ghost should appear at 3 1/2 mins or maybe even 4 mins, 2 and a half minutes doesn't really seem reasonable considering most games in this vein actually actively endorse you to spend more time exploring rather than trying to rush you which leads to YASD, obsessive completion disorder people will probably complain about this quite a lot too.

Retain Items after death

Perhaps a way for players to keep some items indefinitely? Like for example collecting some 200 kapalas in the course of one's multiple playthroughs.
-Anonymous

• Some kind of minor unlock system would be nice. For the kapala example above, maybe start the player off with a lesser kapala that provides one heart for every 20 blood - enough to provide a reward, but not enough to make sacrifices obsolete.

Nerf Yetis

Put a 1 second cooldown on the Yeti's throw. Seriously. -Anonymous

• Seconding this. Yeti and cultist ricochet-loops are a needless instant-death scenario. Further, they'll kill you almost instantly if the space between you, the thrower, and the wall is just a few pixels wide. The thrower will literally flap its arms, and then your health vanishes. It's not necessarily a bug, but a scenario in which the enemy reaction is unnecessarily severe under certain (and likely) conditions. (I'm watching a yeti endlessly pummel the spelunker postmortem. It's kind of amusing to watch, really.)
  

(Update: Just about any corner and any wall with a high ceiling ensures a deadly ricochet loop. This makes yetis far, far deadlier than they were ever likely intended to be, as escaping the loop is impossible. Tempted to list this as a minor bug.)

• If we really want deadly yetis and cultists, make the former able to throw (and occasionally spawn armed with) rocks and give some of the latter machetes to swing around.

Delay UFO explosions

UFOs should cook off. Too many encounters with the (already quite evil) UFO are just a YASD waiting to happen, and occasionally (read: frequently) unavoidable. Making the crashed UFO behave like a fire frog with a shorter fuse would be sufficiently forgiving.

• I second this! - TL

Make the Black Market harder to steal from

It's pretty easy to steal from the black market, so maybe there should be a guard and more traps.
- Anonymous

Now I understand that killing a shopkeeper is not a crime because it would mean getting your crime infinitely extended by trying to make it to the exit. A workaround might be to make the exit guards be "bounty hunters" with at least a different sprite, and maybe different mechanics (grenades/bombs come to mind, but they'd be idiots about it, wouldn't they?), allowing killing a shopkeeper to be a crime in its own. Maybe multiple versions of bounty hunters: When your wanted level is low, they only have pistols; at higher wanted levels, they bring shotguns, and/or come in multiples.
- E-mouse 20:34, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
Addendum: Having them spawn in places other than the exit would help as well: strong enemies at unexpected locations on the 'beaten path' are more dangerous than knowing that you only have to watch out for particularly dangerous enemies at the stage exit, especially when the Compass lets you know where this will be in advance. If this would make dark levels too dangerous, they could be light sources like traps (at least the non-exit patrolling ones) - they need to see too, don't they? A possible way to make the "grenade" idea work would be to have them drop a short-to-mid-fuse bomb on death as a last-ditch effort to kill you. Not dropping money may also be an improvement, so that you can't farm some extra money from the enemies that appear for your "wanted level" punishment.
- E-mouse 06:02, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Catch items with the pitcher's mitt

I guess it'd be fair if, while the Pitcher's Mitt is equipped, you'd catch rocks and arrows with it instead of taking damage. - 16:46, 9 April 2009

Seconded as a brilliant idea - Cesque

Thirded. When I first got the mit I assumed I'd be able to catch rocks and straight away killed myself with a rock to the head. 58.161.42.204 12:42, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I like this idea as well. -DasMaus

This idea is fantastic. -TL

Remove the Ghost in the Black Market

Regarding the black market: If possible, please remove the ghost. It doesn't make sense for a special map like this one to be haunted. I'm sometimes close to having enough to buy an Ankh, but the time limit restricts my gambling pursuits.
- "Anonymous II," 23 April 2009

Regarding gambling: It's always slightly in your favour, IIRC, so it won't make sense to remove the time limit.

--122.106.162.185 13:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

It isn't, assuming fair dice, but apparently you can "cheat" by throwing the dice, grabbing them before they land, and then putting them down if the value on the dice is favorable. I may be wrong about this; I never bothered. - E-mouse 00:03, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe that you can re-roll the first die you throw as much as you want, so you can have a greater chance of hitting your point.

The shopkeeper kills you if you reroll the first die now. 71.205.161.123 16:54, October 11, 2009 (UTC)

That's too stupid because you can grab the first dice by accident (often happens to me) and there is no way not to get chased by angry shopkeeper. Methinks only the first roll should count and no you shouldn't be punished for using the first dice again.

Remove Fire Frogs from Black Market level generation

Red frogs keep appearing in the black market, sometimes making the merchants aggro me because of the bomb effect, this has happened twice so far and is very frustrating.

Ragequit option

Perhaps a ragequit button or key combination. An uninterruptable function which lobs all of your stuff, including your equipped items, everywhere. Everything gets thrown away except for your last bomb, which gets armed and glued to your hand - you regain control after this. In the absence of bombs, you just die after throwing everything away.
Everyone loves a good ragequit.

Reprogram Progress and scores to not be stored in the Registry

Achievements should be stored in a file, not the registry.

Seconded - or some kind of "export/import" function to let us carry stats/unlocks/etc between different copies of the game. Or better yet, a way to store them online?

Thirded -DasMaus

Use the Mattock while hanging with the Climbing gloves

If Climbing Gloves are obtained and you find a Mattock (Pick-axe), allow the use of it while clinging at any height of a wall. --Hawkeye

Online Multiplayer

• Online Multiplayer mode!!! --Hawkeye
• Cooperative play over the internet or hotseat.

I second this, Spelunky should definitely be multiplayer.

I third this, but GM´s multiplayer functionality can be quite iffy, at best.

I fourth this. I have a lot of experience coding online multiplayer, and it can very much be achieved with minimal fuss using 39dll. If that proves too hard, offline multiplayer would have very few issues. -Alexander_Q

I fifth this. Would be brilliant!

I sixth this! Would be amazing

Not impossible though, and Derek has been godlikely resourceful with the very inflexible GM engine, so far.

Rope Preview

A "rope preview" - holding the use rope button (or action button with rope selected) would display a shadow of where the rope would end up if you used it from your current position. Wasting your last rope because you're a few pixels to the side is a pain. The rope would be deployed once you let the button go, and obviously you can walk about without letting it go (and have the preview update as you move).

Seconded, as it is extremely easy to waste precious ropes without this. -DasMaus

Thirded! -TL

New Level Feeling/Item

I had an idea the other day. Somewhere in Area 1 you get the level feeling "A perfumed breeze washes over you", and somewhere on the level there is a tiny flower. You can pick up this flower, but if you take a hard fall, get hit, throw the flower or drop it, it 'breaks' into a few petals which blow away. You can still use the bomb and rope keys, but cycling through your inventory or the like drops the flower. If you can carry the flower all the way to a special tile in Area 3, a hidden passage in the rock opens up and you go to a special level which is just a temple, at the top of which is a yogi. What he gives you could be any number of things: enlightenment (which could be any number of things, like being able to fly like a jetpack, or a bunch of health), a special item, or maybe a cache of regular items ("transcendance is for chumps!").
- brvbt

Stun recovery warning

It would be nice if the stars floating above a stunned enemy would blink or flicker shortly before the enemy is about to recover.

New Features

I'd like to see the gold eggs and mushrooms have a place in the game. Here are ideas:

• Gold eggs might appear next to the golden idol.
• Or they could be sort of mini golden idol -- there would be 1-2 on every level. If you pick one up, it takes up your item slot like the normal golden idols. They would have a value of 2000, maybe?.
• Combining the above two ideas, they could break if they were hit by the idol trap.
• Of the eight kinds of mushrooms, 5 would take HP and 2 would give HP. The last one could give you a special item. Fireball Cannon, maybe?

Multiplayer mode

I'd love to see a two-player mode for player-made levels. It would be awesome if players can engage in 99HP shotgun fights, with an element of racing to gather up useful items like bombs and jetpacks (maybe dealing with some shopkeepers and mummies at the same time). Two players using the same keyboard is good enough.
-Gabriel (May 23, 2010)

Light Source Item

How about a flashlight/mini lanturn that you can buy in the shop? It would act like an infinite flare on dark levels that can't be extinguished without taking up your item slot. -TL (Feb/08/2010)

Item quality system

A "beatitude" system, like that found in various Roguelikes, which causes items to come in three varieties: blessed, normal, and cursed. These items might be distinguishable by very subtle color differences, or maybe they'd have auras only visible by using Spectacles or the Udjat Eye. While a normal jetpack lets you fly for a set amount of time before the engine cuts out, a blessed jetpack might never cut out, and a cursed jetpack might cut out unexpectedly. A blessed mattock might never break; a cursed mattock might bounce harmlessly off rock and "bind" to your hands, taking up that item slot and preventing you from equipping any other items until the next level. MagFlare 02:18, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Addition: This could alternatively be called a "quality" system - if the differences aren't mystically-based, then this would make more sense to require the Spectacles to distinguish, giving it a substantial extra use over the Udjat Eye. The alternative quality levels could be "well-crafted" and "broken/damaged" or something like that, which has the same general effect. If you REALLY want to get crazy, you could have both systems... for a total of nine versions of each item. This is probably excessive.
More examples to play with:

• Cursed/Broken guns misfire, jam, or have slower/erratic reload times
• Cursed/Broken jetpack sputters out and doesn't work at all for several seconds even after you land
• Cursed/Broken cape falls off after long use and has to be picked up again
• Cursed/Broken climbing gloves sometimes make you fall rather than jump up when not against a hangable ledge
• Cursed/Broken teleporter sends you a short distance in the wrong direction at random or is more random/less forgiving with warping into walls
• Cursed/Broken webcannon sometimes puts a web at your feet, trapping YOU
• Cursed/Broken spike shoes get you stuck in the ground after a long fall
• Cursed/Broken bow takes longer to pull back, misfires, or breaks if pulled back too long/often
• Cursed/Broken compass occasionally points at a random other item in the room rather than the exit (or just at the entrance)
• Cursed/Broken machete can get stuck in enemies or occasionally break
• Cursed/Broken parachute may deploy either extra-earlier or extra-later, or fall off on its own
• Cursed/Broken pitcher's mitt may not always kick in, or send items in an inappropriate direction
• Cursed/Broken spring shoes randomly bounce you back up a square after landing on the ground, making movement unpredictable
• Blessed/Masterful jetpack lasts longer or can recharge with time while not being fired by hanging onto things or to provide a small burst after a long fall
• Blessed/Masterful cape bounces back enemies behind you when you whip
• Blessed/Masterful pitcher's mitt catches items that would hurt you if you aren't carrying anything
• Blessed/Masterful machete hits upper-right as well with a full swing in front and/or hits a 4th time
• Blessed/Masterful teleporter has a narrower teleport range to make it more reliable, displaces you up further, or allows safe displacement in different directions
• Blessed/Masterful guns reload faster, have bullets that curve slightly towards enemies, or can be aimed up at an angle
• Blessed/Masterful bow arrows seek out enemies, pull back faster, can aim up, or deal extra damage. (Bows should probably aim up anyway...)
• Blessed/Masterful climbing gloves let you climb walls like vines/ladders using up and down rather than jumping
• Blessed/Masterful compass also displays distance to the exit, or has a more detailed directional indication
• Blessed/Masterful parachute is sometimes recoverable, or can be picked up again once, after which it becomes a "normal" parachute
• Blessed/Masterful spike shoes let you stand on enemies (or enemy corpses) by holding down while landing (to make it controllable)
• Blessed/Masterful spring shoes let you jump slightly higher by holding up at the start of your jump (to make it controllable)
• Blessed/Masterful webcannon makes webs not reduce your horizontal movement (so you can still use them as faux platforms)
  

- E-mouse 07:07, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea unless cursed/broken items are obvious without Spectacles. Equipable items can't be removed and we have enough YASD without items randomly failing.

This is actually a pretty interesting idea. But it is a really immense amount of work, since many of them alters game physics (which is a pain).

Sinks

Sinks, like in NetHack. Hitting one with a thrown object would cause something to happen. Maybe the sink would cough up some treasure, or maybe it'd unleash a torrent of snakes. MagFlare 02:18, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

One-way Blocks

Blocks or walls that only allow passage from certain directions. This would prevent players from backtracking, without the use of doors. DasMaus 7:18, 21 March 2009

Custom sprites

Costumes and custom sprites! I can't be the only one who wants to play as Tunnel Man.

Mine Carts

How about adding mine carts to levels? Great for transporting yourself quickly past (and through) enemies into adventure (and lava)!

New Item: Holster

New equipable item: Universal Holster - can hold one handheld item (Machete, Pickaxe, Shotgun, Pistol, Bow, Web Shooter, Teleporter etc.) when cycling through.

Various suggestions

Dark Levels, Light, Grues, etc:

Have counter on HUD for number of remaining flares, like counters for number of bombs and ropes.

Grues! Maybe make them a instant-death, like spikes, but scared away by flares.

Gold, gems, and other shiny objects should give off a small amount of light, like the lanterns.

New Item for the Tunnel Man

Tunnel Man's shovel item, kinda like the pickaxe, but doesn't break, only digs through earth tiles (and thus useless in the Area 4) and only downwards.

New Item: Map

A map item: when equipped, hold the use button + arrows to scroll through the entire level.

Sloped Blocks

Sloped tiles that makes you run(if downwards) or slow down(if upwards). If its an ice slope, you slide down and can't go up. All items(expect for sticky bombs) will slide down as well. If you are equipped with spiked shoes, all slopes act like normal terrain.

Mushrooms

A mushroom, when eaten, makes spelunker invulnerable for 30 seconds and gives the ability to punch through other tiles(like a pickaxe). Rarely encountered only in Area 2. Cannot be carried - has to be eaten on the spot. Spelunker loses 1 life after 30 seconds.

• A different take on the Mushroom idea; regain some serious health (2-4 hp?) but wind up hallucinating, perhaps similar to Nethack (enemies appear strangely), though I imagine it could be a lot crazier. I'd put it on a timer or step-counter, so that there's no quick-fixes by quickly exiting the level.

Self-Sacrifice

I think it would be great fun if you could sacrifice yourself to Kali, by standing on the altar and pressing Esc+F1 (or perhaps any other means of dying on the altar). This would probably either be an alternative (and perhaps inferior) use for the ankh, or require you to rack up enough favor first. If requiring just favor, you would probably be resurrected as some sort of undead creature like a zombie or a ghost or a vampire, which could grant you any number of useful abilities (e.g. healing with blood and flying or a normal cape for a vampire, or perhaps a zombie would only die to 1-hit kills). In the case of the ankh method, it might be worth as little as just a bunch of favor. Who knows, maybe with the ankh she'd be angry because you tried to fake a self-sacrifice ("Kali rejects your sacrifice..."?). As part of the whole mechanism, a self-sacrifice without the ankh or favor should still explode the character and say "Kali accepts your sacrifice" before game over, so that hopefully players who attempt it will not be discouraged from trying again in special circumstances.
-Def_Gie

Selling items to shopkeepers

Selling Items: It might be neat to be able to sell items to shopkeepers. This would be especially useful if you could pick more than one of each item but would still be useful for redundant items (e.g. spring shoes and jetpack, cape and parachute.)

• Seconded! It would also be nice to be able to sell extra ropes/bombs. There's not a huge use for ropes after you get a jet pack.

How about Foreground objects? Like a big rock you can walk behind; may obscure enemies, can be blown up (and possibly scaled)? I'm not sure how it'd be distinguished from the objects behind it specifically...

Whip-grapple swings

Posts you could swing off of with your whip? It could extend your jump horizontally in some locations.
- Kagirinai

New Game Mode

An 'exploration mode', like that found in Nethack. It could allow newcomers to experience all of the areas without getting frustrated by getting killed 1000 times. -Velkon

New Game Mode

A time trial mode, where you race to the exit door in fastest time possible. - Alex007X

Level Editor

A lot of these request have actually been answered in the releases of Tastes Like Spelunky and Spelunky Editor Plus. I figure I might as well mark off which have been made available. Every line that starts with a has been made available in either of those two mods. Baekara 08:23, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

The ability to place trees, headstones, idol traps, and altars in the level editor would be welcome. MagFlare 03:13, 12 March 2009 (UTC)(this is doable but requires completion of game or at least enough progress. using keys "a","d","1","2","3","4" and "e" in special cases you can get to everything availabe to you)

Also: unbreakable blocks. Sometimes a level creator doesn't want to have to worry about players cleverly using bombs to escape their inescapable deathtraps. MagFlare 15:40, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I think they don't exist to stop evil level creators from easily creating inescapable deathtraps, hindering clever players.

Keys and locked doors would be a fine addition, perhaps several different colors like in Doom. Also I find the current maximum level size to be slightly constricting.
-Mel

Various Suggestions

Don't want to sound greedy, but I have a few suggestions you can pick and choose from.
Some of the things listed below could be considered spoilers.

-ability to control starting flares
-ability to change background tiles
-ability to place pickaxes with a specified number of uses
-ability to control uncontrollable random events such as monster drops, gems in walls, and magma men (Just an on/off switch?)
-ability to hide items in blocks that require the glasses to see
-dark levels and place-able illumination
-gold blocks and excluded tiles in general
-scepter weapon and excluded items in general
-custom messages that appear when a player goes over a tile, similar to the tutorial
-giant space alien/alien ship tiles/force field
-perhaps even scripted items such as place-able shops, the altar, boulder trap, ghost trap and spike ceiling trap
-If I were to make an original suggestion: Exploding Blocks (flying saucers and bomb frogs as environmental explosives are too unpredictable)

-Deckbot

• (Note:Suggestion #9 is already available!(try pressing 'E' when cursor is over sign-post tile))-Anonymous

- Changeable border tiles, so when making a lush or ice level it is in tone.

- Ability to make stone blocks immovable

- Ability to set items in crates, chests and so on

- Ability to make monkeys grab onto vines. As of version 0.99.8, when placing a monkey above ground it plays its grab animation while holding to thin air. But placing a monkey on a vine deletes the vine, and while it can move up and down the rest of the vine, this makes it difficult (or impossible) to place a monkey on a vine and make it look normal (e.g. have the vine start from the ceiling and NOT be cut in the middle.)

Other Explorers

-other spelunkers explore the cave and try to make it to the end of the level just like you, with multiple behavior types such as: hostile, friendly, greedy, pacifistic, and mischievous.

New Traps/Items

• Spring traps that are outfitted on the sides of walls (which would make the ice levels much more difficult)
• Spikes for ceiling (making jumps in tight spots tricky).
• Magic Books?
  

-Slayer999

Various Suggestions

• A rifle weapon that, when aimed, can allow you to scroll the screen left or right to view something to shoot at.
• Being able to accidentally cause a cave-in if, say, you dig yourself too far down with very little supporting the stuff above you. Splat.
  

Lordovos 22:44, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

New Game Mode

An endless mode! Where maybe you get a cave from a random area every time, or possibly where you get random features from every area - so you can get a level with the layout of area 3 but populated with snakes and frogs, for example. And maybe the first 5-10 levels should be "Classic" and not randomized this way. As this game is endless, maybe you can choose to leave every time you finish a level and keep your score because if you die your score is halved! - Siro a map that shows you where to find damsels, crates, chests...etc

Cosmetic changes to the Gateway Cave

As a cute little touch, perhaps the trophies you earn (shown in the Scores room) could make small changes to the opening scene of the game, where the Spelunker runs towards the cave entrance.

For example, with the bronze kills trophy, he could jump and whip a lowflying bat. With silver, there could be a snake he whips in passing. With gold, he could jump on the snake and whip a bat on the rebound. For gold, there could be a piece of gold/gem on the ground that he collects on his way...

Would just be a nice touch imo :)
- Kefka

Modify Held items

Maybe having the Machete, Pistol and/or Shotgun replace the whip when picked up would be a good idea. Naturally, there should be an "unequip weapon" button (down-jump?) and the weapons should be rarer/more expensive, but I think that would be an improvement. Also on the note of weapons, a "grenade launcher" that fires bombs (whatever type you currently have) out of your inventory would be nice. Same range as fully-charged bow with a hefty cooldown? - Symmetry

Various suggestions

-A special item system unlike the one listed above in the "New Features" section. When you go into a shop or find it by defeating a Large Spider or other boss. A potion system! Health Potions will give you a number of lives. Basic Health potions will give you one life and nothing is really special about them, and Intermediate Health Potions give you two lives. Elite Health Potions, however, they're a different story. They give you three lives, a five-second, temporary invincibility, and serve as a torch in dark places when picked up. -

Random items in the Gateway cave

-I think it would be fun if randomly, and rarely, you get an equipped item (like a jetpack, cape, spring shoes, or even some bombs) during the menu. Just for messing around with really, but it would be enjoyable.

Varying Shopkeeper lethality

-The shopkeepers need to have an intermediate stage in between "peaceful" and "murderdeathkill" for minor infractions. If you try re-rolling in the dice house, for instance, the proprietor doesn't take out his shotgun (but still throws you) when he comes after you, and he loses aggro when you exit the bounds of his shop.

Various Suggestions

• More traps! As is, you can learn all the trap types within your first fifty or so deaths. Lots of additional trap types - or, better, somehow randomly generated trap types.
• Wands, Nethack-style. When used, they'll launch a beam with some effect in a straight line. There are various possible effects, and they're randomly matched with sprites at the beginning of the game (i.e. in a given game, all the red wands are wands of digging - but when you die and start again, the red wands become wands of lightning)
• Also, other Nethack-style items. Potions, helms, amulets... All with per-game randomised effects. Note that picking up a clothing item will not make Spelunky automatically wear it: you've got to hit the whip button while carrying them to do that. Not sure how you'd take the items OFF again, though.
• With all these Nethack-style random items, you'll need some sort of identifying device. Perhaps the Spectacles could allow you to identify an item safely? Alternately, just have a limited-use identifier, like a wand or scroll of identify.

00Davo 06:48, February 8, 2010 (UTC)

Online High Score Table

• A more fully-featured high score list (with names).
• Online high-score lists