As punishing as the original Spelunky was, its sequel is more so.

All too often, you’ll die with only a split-second’s warning, to plummeting moles, to errant poison bubbles, to spikes or spears or furious astral jellyfish. Sometimes it feels distinctly unfair, an engine of cruelty designed to entice you with the promise of a new run, only to snatch it away in a cacophony of unavoidable fate.

If you choose not to learn from your repeated demise, that’s where your dalliance will most likely end, in frustration and death.

Sure, you may uncover a generous handful of secrets, dangling clues that thread through the rest of the adventure, but following those threads will always fall afoul of one truth: if there’s a chance of dying to any specific obstacle, sooner or later those percentages trend towards certain death.

But it’s in those fractions of percentages that Spelunky 2 starts to shine. It’s in the thousands of tiny decisions and split-second risk assessments that become second nature, the miniscule optimisations which do nothing but shave slight probabilities from your chances of being caught off guard.

And over the course of a run, as you descend through lava caves and ruined temples and ancient civilisations full of increasingly merciless traps, those slivers of chance begin to add up.

Death is still inevitable, a matter of mounting probability. But maybe this time, you’re smart enough and quick enough and perceptive enough to stay one step ahead, for as long as it takes.