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 Spelunky Discord Community Awards 2017: Day One Winners

Posted by hb on December 19th, 2017 @10:38PM

The ballots are in and the votes have been counted and verified. A big thank you to everybody who nominated and cast their vote.

 

The wait is over. We can now reveal the winners of this year's Spelunky Discord Community Awards! The winners will be announced across two days: six awards categories today, and then five tomorrow. Find out what won on Day One below...

 

 

Best Moss Points Category

All Shortcuts + Olmec

Hell%

Low%

Low Hell%

No Teleporter Any%

Score

 

THIRD PLACE

Low Hell% (17%)

 

SECOND PLACE

Low% (22%)

 

AND THE WINNER IS...

 

 

 

ALL SHORTCUTS + OLMEC (25%)

 

Written by hbix:

 

If there's one category which truly left its mark on the community in 2017, it's All Shortcuts + Olmec.

 

On September 8, the All Shortcuts + Olmec Tournament kicked off with a 40-strong lineup. This included top-ranking players such as Buddy7heElf, Curticus, and Spef, while legends Krille71 and d_tea were lured out of retirement. Over the next month, the community was collectively gripped as they gathered to watch and buzz about races broadcasted on Twitch. Even Spelunky creator Derek Yu was taken in by the excitement, checking out some of the matches.

 

Krille71 would go on to beat d_tea in the finals, which were held on SpeedGaming and drew more than 600 concurrent viewers. The tournament was an incredible success, and everybody involved -- organisers, hosts, commentators, participants, viewers -- should be proud.

 

In All Shortcuts + Olmec, the player must -- from a blank save -- unlock all three shortcuts (Jungle, Ice, and Temple) before beating the game by defeating Olmec. The shortcuts themselves neatly double up as checkpoints, meaning that -- unlike every run which uses the in-game timer -- dying during a delivery does not end the run. But the nature of this feature, combined with the meaty length of an All Shortcuts + Olmec run, actually presents a very different challenge. While most standard, shorter categories when speedrun encourage the player to go gung-ho (after all, what's a simple reset?), All Shortcuts + Olmec demands a greater degree of caution.

 

Death may not end the run, but it does hit you with a costly time penalty. Risk versus reward takes on a different meaning, and it makes for an entertaining category to play and spectate alike.

 

 

Written by MikeIsMyIke:

 

The infamous shotgun split. Do I rob the 2-1 hired hand shop for his shotgun, or do I pray for a late jungle shop or Dead Are Restless level? If you're lucky, you might even come across the black market with resources to complete a triple delivery -- handing in the shotgun (2-4 exit), three bombs (mothership entrance), and three ropes (3-4.2 exit) all with the same life.

 

Scenarios like these are a part of what makes All Shortcuts + Olmec unique and popular among the community. Every decision you make is critical, no matter if you're in the jungle, attempting the brutal key delivery, or making your way through the temple.

 

It is stressful for the whole duration of the run, and you'll be hard-pressed to find another category this varied and well-rounded, putting so many skills to the test. With the auto-splitter, it's super easy to set up and get going, so if you haven't tried it yet: what are you waiting for?

 

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Best Meme Category

Action Hero Any%

All Achievements

Draining Olmec

Key to Yama

Temple Shortcut%

Tutorial High Score

 

THIRD PLACE

Draining Olmec (17%)

 

SECOND PLACE

Action Hero Any% (22%)

 

AND THE WINNER IS...

 

 

 

ALL ACHIEVEMENTS (28%)

 

Written by ix:

 

All Achievements in a single segment was a feat discussed in the Spelunky community for years: rarely attempted, occasionally brought up as a joke, but never completed.

 

Time passed, and MossRankers moved on to tackle other challenges. BumCommando popularized the All Journal Entries run and pushed his own world record down to a competitive time. Critically, Konato_K pioneered the All Characters run, which initially involved several hours of grinding the RNG (seemingly) necessary to find the four random area coffins.

 

As more runners began to compete for the All Characters WR, rumors began to circulate that the death counter was correlated with the likelihood of these four coffins appearing. Ultimately, Sashavol peeked into the source code and confirmed these suspicions, revealing the precise death counts necessary to maximize the odds of a quick coffin find. Thus, the era of death grinding began, which saw an hour and a half shaved off the WR in a little over a week.

 

With the new strats, the category became popular enough to warrant a LiveSplit tracker alongside All Shortcuts + Olmec and All Journal Entries.

 

 

With the 'The Whole Gang' achievement sorted out, a single-segment All Achievements run started to appear feasible. All it would really take is someone with the skills to reliably complete an All Journal Entries run (lots of people), the patience for a No Gold run (many people), the desire to complete an All Characters run (a couple of people), and the mental toughness to grind the last 700 or so deaths of the 'Addicted' achievement (so far, one person).

 

The run now has three completions: a nearly six-hour run in August, a sub-four-hour run as part of the Spelunky All Games Done Quick (AGDQ) fundraiser stream, and one more as part of the Really Really Long A Thon, all by ix.

 

Thank you to everyone who voted for this meme category. What we need now is a tracker and for more runners to compete. Also, Death% should have won!

 

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Best Miscellaneous Category

All Characters

All Journal Entries

Jumbo Money

Max Low No Gold Hell%

Shield Run

Tutorial%

 

THIRD PLACE

Shield Run (18%)

 

SECOND PLACE

All Journal Entries (21%)

 

AND THE WINNER IS...

 

 

MAX LOW NO GOLD HELL% (26%)

 

Written by Kinnijup:

 

Max Low No Gold Hell% is thought of by many as the pinnacle of a Spelunky challenge run. It combines precise Low% platforming with the critical thinking necessary for a difficult challenge run. Reaction-based gameplay is a big factor in the run frequently as well.

 

After the first Max Low Hell% run was done at the end of 2014, it would be half a year before d_tea became the first person to complete the run without gold on a blind seed. In the three years the category has been attempted, it has only had five total completed runs from three runners. Pibonacci (who had the second completion) has one of them. d_tea and I each have two, and we both have a speed run of it done.

 

The last time somebody completed the challenge run for the first time was in February 2016 (by me). Several notable runners have been very close to joining this list and others are actively trying. Spef5 and Buddy7heElf each have a Max Low Hell% finish with two pieces of gold, and both Buddy and Krille71 have an MLNGH Yama death. MLNGH went from being almost impossible, to being frighteningly difficult to finish but doable, to being speedran.

 

The category also went through a bit of a name transformation, and some Lunkers will still call it LMNGH (the original name it was given) as it rolls off the tongue pretty well!

 

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Indie Game of the Year

Cuphead

Dead Cells (Early Access)

The End Is Nigh

Hollow Knight

Japanese Breakquest

Night in the Woods

 

THIRD PLACE

Dead Cells (Early Access) (8%)

 

SECOND PLACE

Hollow Knight (27%)

 

AND THE WINNER IS...

 

 

CUPHEAD (54%)

 

Written by Twiggle:

 

Cuphead is a run-and-gun platformer, seven years in the making. The game is mainly a boss rush, most of which on the ground where you are jumping and dashing, but some bosses also take place in the air where Cuphead and Mugman get to fly planes that shoot. The game has six platforming levels as well, two in each of the three main worlds, which have been handcrafted with unique environments and enemies.

 

From the moment I saw a preview of the game at one of the PAXs, I had a feeling that it would be amazing. However, before it launched, I did have concerns about the game, and I'm sure I wasn't alone. Obviously the art and visuals are top-notch, but that doesn't mean a thing if the game doesn't play well. Does the platforming feel good? Are the bosses too RNG-heavy? Is the game too hard or too easy for most players? Is the price going to be as high as a triple-A game?

 

I'm happy to say that all of these doubts were thrown out the window within my first few hours of playing the game. The art and music are great, that's a given, but the bosses are also super fun to fight, and each of them are so unique.

 

 

The difficulty has been somewhat of a controversy, but I think it has been blown way out of proportion. It's harder than most casual games such as the recent Marios, but not as hard as the eight-bit Marios of the 1980s and early 1990s which were downright frustrating in places. The price was also a pleasent surprise, being USD $19.99, right around the cost of most pixel-art indie games.

 

Cuphead's main campaign only took eight hours for me to beat the first time, but I enjoyed every second of it! (It took around 22 hours to get all of the achievements and unlocks.) The game is really enjoyable playing co-op as well, even if you're partner isn't the best at platformers. Overall, this game is one of the most high-quality 2D platformers ever made. I would recommend this game to pretty much anyone who enjoys video games, not just hardcore platformer lovers.

 

If you don't have it already, it's probably going to go on sale during Steam's winter sale, starting on December 21. Have fun!

 

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Most Anticipated Game That Isn't Spelunky 2

Dunk Lords

Industries of Titan

La-Mulana 2

Monster Hunter: World

Red Dead Redemption 2

UFO 50

 

THIRD PLACE

Red Dead Redemption 2 (18%)

 

SECOND PLACE

La-Mulana 2 (21%)

 

AND THE WINNER IS...

 

 

UFO 50 (46%)

 

Written by ix:

 

Retro was big in 2017. A live-action adaptation of 1991's Beauty in the Beast is currently the the highest-grossing film this year, and the only serious challenger to this title is... the latest installment of 1977's Star Wars franchise. In music, the 50th anniversary reissue of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band peaked at #3 in the USA and #1 in the UK.  In gaming, Nintendo made a killing with the NES and SNES Classic Editions, cashing in on their seemingly bottomless vault of vintage games.

 

With UFO 50, Derek Yu and friends pose the question: are our desires for nostalgia simply a byproduct of memory and time, or can they be cultivated by developers and incepted into gamers' brains? UFO 50 is a collection of fifty games for a fictional console from the late '80s that were lost in time for a couple of decades and set to resurface on PC sometime in 2018. If voters of the 2017 Spelunky Discord Community Awards are to believed, Yu et al. might just be onto something. We're all eager to relive these games for the first time!

 

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Overall Game of the Year

Cuphead

Divinity: Original Sin 2

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (Early Access)

Sonic Mania

Super Mario Odyssey

 

THIRD PLACE

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (11%)

 

SECOND PLACE

Cuphead (33%)

 

AND THE WINNER IS...

 

 

SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY (37%)

 

Written by meowmixmix:

 

One thing that really stuck out this year was the quality of games that came out. With hits like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Cuphead, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, how could we possibly choose? In the end, a winner had to stand tall among the others. As a community based around a platforming game, it’s no surprise that Mario Odyssey takes the win for Overall Game of the Year.

 

Mario is the king of video games. Time and time again, he has proven to be an everlasting character with unlimited possibilities. For the past seven years, Nintendo seemingly has struggled to live up to this impossible level of expectation. But with Mario Odyssey, Mario is back to reclaim his throne.

 

Mario Odyssey is another brilliant redefinition of the very platforming genre that he helped popularize 30 years ago. In Mario Odyssey, we are introduced to Mario’s new companion Cappy who brings along with him the ability to possess other characters (or objects) within the worlds. Each character has their own unique abilities and movement mechanics. There are so many options for traversal when you put the movement of Mario and his possessed allies together, and it feels like Odyssey has just barely scratched the surface of what its mechanics are even capable of. Throughout the campaign, you are using new creatures in different game-changing ways on a regular basis.

 

 

Odyssey is filled with vibrant locations which pairs perfectly with its sweeping orchestra. Each kingdom has its own atmosphere, its own music, and its own enemies to capture, and then after you beat the game, every single level gets repopulated with even more challenges. In fact, you only need 120 Moons to beat the game and 500 Moons to get a different ending out of more than 830 of them. Even after completing the game, Mario Odyssey has so much more to explore.

 

Mario Odyssey takes its rightful place as the Overall Best Game of the Year for its unique style that it so easily integrates with the platforming genre that we all have come to know and love. It breathes new life into this genre, and other studios have much to learn from Nintendo’s success on this one.

 

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Come back tomorrow (December 21) for Day Two of this year's Spelunky Discord Community Awards, where the winners for Favourite Spelunky Streamer, Newcomer of the Year, Spelunky Community MVP, Best All Shortcuts + Olmec Tournament Race, and the 'Wait, This Isn't Spelunky' Award will be revealed.