What you’re seeing above shouldn’t be possible, but krille71 somehow pulled it off. Here’s how.
During the Spelunky section of Awesome Games Done Quick, creator Derek Yu idly wondered aloud if anyone had tried pulling off a pacifist no gold run run.
Not 24 hours later, krille71 published a video doing exactly that. It’s ridiculous.
Let’s break down what those terms mean, though.
In Spelunky, the basic tactic for success is using bombs and whips to defeat enemies. It’s very easy to die in Spelunky, so players tend to use everything in their power to survive. A pacifist run means you cannot actively kill anyone. It’s possible for enemies to incidentally die, but it cannot happen by your hand.
That’s the pacifist part.
As you progress, you’re constantly picking up gold to buy new items. It’s not only hidden inside chests and destructible blocks, but it’s laying on the ground, too. It’s really, really hard to make it through a run without picking up any gold whatsoever. (I’ve successfully earned the speedlunky achievement—beat the game in under 8 minutes— but did not have the patience to do a no gold run.)
That’s the no gold part.
Combining the two is already hard, but krille71 did so while stacking another requirement on top: he didn’t want to hurt the game’s first boss, Olmec, either.
The expected way to defeat Olmec is getting him to accidentally kill himself by falling into the lava. To access the game’s secret world, Hell, you have to stand on Olmec’s head while he’s dying to enter a hidden door.
I’ve never seen anyone make it into the door without killing Olmec!
krille71 manages to sneak through Hell and defeat Yama, the game’s final boss, without hurting anyone. To prove this, he purposely killed himself to get the game’s stat screen to show up, as he stood outside the final door.
Bravo, krille71, bravo.
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.