Spelunky is a platform adventure for up to four players in local co-op. You and your friends explore the same cave run, where every floor is built from shifting arrangements of blocks, treasure, monsters, and traps. The PC game has no native online co-op, but Steam Remote Play Together can stream a local session to friends. It stays a shared-screen game either way: everyone follows the same route, and a badly timed bomb can cause trouble for the whole group.
A new cave on every run
Your goal is simple to understand: find the exit at the bottom of each floor and keep descending. The path is rarely simple. A level may offer a clear ladder down one side, a wall that can be blown open, a shop packed with useful gear, or a tempting pocket of treasure behind an arrow trap. The layouts change from run to run, but their pieces follow rules you can learn. A pot may hide a snake; a dart trap fires when something crosses its line; a bomb can expose a shortcut through rock and set off a chain reaction nearby.
The main route moves through distinct underground regions, including the Mines, Jungle, Ice Caves, and Temple. Each brings a different mix of enemies and terrain. The Mines introduce snakes, spiders, bats, and arrow traps. Jungle floors layer in pools, plants, and swinging or springing hazards. Ice has slippery ground and wide gaps, while the Temple fills tight spaces with heavier enemies and crushing traps. The changes are more than a new backdrop: a jump that felt safe in one area can become a different calculation when the floor is slick or the blocks around it move.
A timer puts an upper limit on each floor. If you remain too long, a ghost appears and chases anyone still exploring. The exit provides the route down, while rooms can hide a crate, a rescued character, a shop, or treasure beyond an awkward drop. Those detours add possible rewards and extra demands on limited tools and time. A floor might offer a rope climb to a prize or a bomb-opened passage; the timer makes each room part of a larger run.
Whips, ropes, bombs, and bad ideas
Your explorer begins with a whip, a few bombs, and ropes. The whip can fend off nearby enemies and trigger some objects, while a thrown rock or pot can set off traps from a safer distance. Ropes give you a way up or down a shaft, and bombs break terrain, uncover buried items, and open routes that ladders do not reach. Those tools are limited during a run, so using one to avoid a hazard can mean having one fewer when a more valuable opportunity appears later.
Nearly everything in a room can affect something else. A bomb blast may dislodge a rock, wake a shopkeeper, or push a stunned enemy into a hazard. A loose item can reveal a trap or set one off. Shopkeepers sell equipment such as a shotgun, climbing gloves, or a jetpack, but stealing can turn them into armed pursuers who remember the offense. Rescuing a damsel or dog and carrying them to an exit can earn extra health. The same objects that help you navigate can change how a room’s hazards play out.
The controls stay compact while the consequences spread out. You jump, whip, climb, pick up, and throw; bombs and ropes add the main ways to change the level. A jetpack, cape, climbing gloves, or other found item can alter how you cross a gap, but none turns a run into a permanent character build. Gear is useful while you survive and is lost when the run ends. Learning what each tool can do, and what it can accidentally set off, is the lasting advantage you carry into another attempt.
One cave and one shared camera
In Adventure co-op, all players explore the same floors and share one camera. The view follows a leader, so a friend who wanders too far can leave the visible action and has to catch up. There is no separate screen for each explorer. On two players, that makes the route feel close and immediate; with four, more characters and hazards compete for the same space. A bat entering from above or a shopkeeper charging across a narrow ledge can become everyone’s problem in a moment.
Each explorer starts with the same basic kit, and the game does not assign a medic, tank, or other formal role. Extra players make a room busier, but do not bring a separate co-op toolkit or distinct character classes.
Death changes what a player can do, but it does not always remove them from the run. A fallen explorer becomes a ghost that can float around and blow on enemies or objects. A ghost can shove a threat away from a living friend or create a distraction, though it can also make an already busy room less predictable. A surviving player who reaches a later floor can find a coffin and bring one dead teammate back into the adventure. If everyone falls before anyone reaches the next exit, the run is over. That gives a surviving explorer a route forward while a fallen friend has a small supporting role and a reason to watch what happens next.
This rescue loop changes how a full run feels. A death can leave one person out of the physical action for several minutes, and the coffin is not guaranteed to appear where you want it. At the same time, the ghost can still interact with the room, and a later revival lets the party reunite. The mix of a shared camera, ghost play, and delayed returns makes co-op more chaotic than simply giving each player a copy of the solo adventure. It also means the difficulty is not consistently lower with more people: extra explorers can help with a dangerous room, but they add more ways for a small mistake to spread.
What progress survives a run?
Gold, equipment, and most of what you collect are part of the current attempt. If the whole party dies, a new run starts at the beginning rather than loading a saved build of stronger explorers. The game’s long-term progress is different: you can fill out an explorer’s journal, unlock more characters, complete achievements, and open shortcuts by helping Tunnel Man with requests between regions. Those shortcuts reduce the distance to areas you have already reached, but they do not preserve a previous loadout or make the later floors safe.
That structure gives your group two kinds of goals. A straightforward descent means reaching the next exit with enough health and equipment to keep going. A more exploratory run might spend bombs looking for a hidden room, take a chance on a shop, rescue a companion, or carry a key across a floor. Each choice can lead to more treasure or a faster route, but it can also put a player in range of a trap or make the ghost timer a factor. There is no skill tree that steadily fixes the odds after a rough run; improvement comes from recognizing the patterns, understanding item interactions, and reaching new sections with better information.
The randomness works alongside repetition rather than replacing it. You see different arrangements and combinations, but recurring enemies and hazards behave consistently. After several attempts, a dart trap becomes something you can bait with a rock, and a loose pot becomes a clue to check before whipping it. The journal gives you another record to fill, while the unlockable explorers change how your character looks without creating a roster of classes with different abilities. For a group that wants gear levels to rise across sessions, that can feel like a missing reward. For friends who enjoy recognizing the same danger and handling it better, it keeps the next run open-ended.
Deathmatch and a daily score run
Deathmatch provides a separate way to use the controls. Instead of descending as a team, up to four players fight each other in unlockable arenas. Friends can adjust match settings and use weapons, bombs, or hazards to turn the space into a fast free-for-all. Bots are available for Deathmatch, so an empty seat in that mode can still have an opponent. Those bots do not turn the Adventure campaign into a co-op session with AI partners.
The Daily Challenge is another separate mode. Each day gives everyone the same generated run, and you have one attempt to put a score on the Steam community leaderboard. It is an online comparison, not an online group adventure: you will not join a friend’s world or move through a separate copy of the caves together. It offers a reason to revisit the same rules under a shared daily seed, while co-op and Deathmatch stay local modes.
The setup is local, even when you stream it
The game supports local co-op for four on one computer. It does not provide native Internet or LAN co-op, so the normal arrangement is to gather around one screen. The Windows version supports controllers and keyboard input, including XInput-compatible pads such as the Xbox 360 controller. If you play remotely, Steam Remote Play Together streams the host’s local session and forwards invited players’ inputs. That can make the couch mode accessible across distance, but it does not add separate cameras or built-in matchmaking, and the quality depends on the streaming connection.
Spelunky is available on Windows, with no Mac or Linux build. Remote Play Together is useful if a friend cannot be in the room, but a group looking for independent online clients, LAN sessions, or cross-platform lobbies should know that the game does not offer those as native modes. Its online Daily Challenge and Steam leaderboards do not change that distinction.
Spelunky fits friends who want a compact platform game with plenty of surprises and are comfortable losing a run to one bad chain reaction. In co-op, you share the screen, the hazards, and the occasional useful rescue; in Deathmatch, you turn those same tools on one another. There is no online campaign progression or long-term party build to maintain. What keeps the cave appealing is that the next arrangement gives your group another chance to spot the trap before it goes off.