The Impact of Spelunky on Game Design

Most games that use procedural content generation are not very good. Spelunky, in my opinion, hits the sweet spot of the parts that are procedurally generated and the parts that Derek basically made by hand and then had the computer compose into what became the final game. When I teach people at the university or wherever else I give talks or whatever, when I teach them how to make games, I just say, you need to understand that PCG is not a silver bullet. Like, it's not going to solve all your design problems.