Okay, so we established last week that I love platformers. It’s also a fact that I love Nethack, possibly the finest procedurally generated Roguelike dungeon crawler out there.  So when I learned through one of the BoingBoing.net of a game that was described as a combination of La-Mulana (which I wasn’t familiar with) and Nethack (which I was intimately familiar with), exactly half of my attention was earned. And when I downloaded Spelunky, and gave it a try, I immediately saw why this game was being called a contender for the best freeware title of the year…in January. The many reasons why (and a link to get it) after the jump.

This minigame sums up almost every deathtrap in Spelunky in one go.

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This week’s You Might Like It concerns the Japanese freeware adventure game Doukutsu Monogatari, known in the West as Cave Story. It’s excellent for a lot of reasons, but I’ll get to those in a minute. First I have to set the stage. I might as well get the Quick-and-Dirty out of the way before the break.

Well, this isn't the worst place I've woken up with a hangover...

The Quick and Dirty
- Cave Story info, walkthrough, and downloads for the game and translation patch at
http://www.miraigamer.net/cavestory/
- A platformer in the vein of Metroid or Castlevania
- Freeware, made single-handedly by one-man team Studio Pixel
- Other draws: emotive and adorable characters, original weapons and power-up system, holds its own against classics in the platformer genre. It’ll also be coming to the Wii via Wiiware in the future!

Now, I’m going to get a bit…scholarly.

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