"No matter how built up you are [in any Spelunky game] and how powerful you are, there is always that slight chance that it could all be over. It's exciting. It's not done enough in games— especially in modern games. [...] Real life is a huge inspiration for me, in terms of how real life works. We're trying to move towards "realism" in terms of graphics and things like that, but it's stuff like instant deaths that I think are more connected to real life from an interactive standpoint, which is what games are all about."