10 Video Games That Punish You For Being Curious
7. Spelunky - The Game Kills You For Playing Too Well
For a game with such a globular, cheery aesthetic, Spelunky is anything but amicable with players.
As a procedurally-generated roguelike, it's expected players will fail, but that's not to say everyone will be prepared by the utter stress of the whole experience - Spelunky is littered with snakes, spikes, spiders, and alliteration, and every last one of them wants you to be not alive.
Playing as Carlos Von Wakabayashi (I don't know his name, so I made one up), the Spelunker of Spelunky has to descend ever-deeper into a set of caves, get a bunch of (presumably blood) diamonds and golden statues, and escape alive.
If you manage to fight the swelling desire to see if you can make a clearly-impossible jump or survive a pit of snakes with barely any weaponry, you might explore the current level long enough to be punished... by Hauntony (I don't know his name, so I made one up), the unstoppable ghost that only appears if you've taken too long on a level (often to investigate every nook and cranny for valuables).
Carlos' only hope is to dash towards the exit, often making hasty mistakes, in order to survive (all the while regretting whether or not it was really worth it to get that last nugget of gold), hoping he'll see his beloved girlfriend, Jemima Starcraft-Paracetamol, once more.
(I didn't know her name s-. You get what happened.)