Derek Yu Talks Spelunky!
Monday, November 29, 2010 at 12:28PM 
We’ve just finished a big San Francisco leg of filming (first of a few SF trips we’ll be making for the film). Everything went quite well, we got a lot of great footage and talked to A LOT of people. The film is really started to take shape in our minds (and sketchbooks) - it’s quite exciting really.
One of the people we talked to this time around, was the extremely talented, funny & nice Derek Yu. Derek is well known as the co-creator (along with Alec Holowka) of IGF Grand Prize Winner ‘Aquaria’. Currently, Derek is working on bringing his latest game ‘Spelunky’ to the Xbox.
We did a lot of talking with Derek, and recently we were going through the collected footage, looking to cut a web piece on TIGJam San Francisco, but this little short just kind of bubbled up to the surface.
The more we talk with developers, and indeed the further we get into this film, the more familiar we are becoming with the concept of not being able to shake your project, and having it consume your every waking thought. It’s a recurring theme to be sure. And one that we wanted to touch on in this video - the concept of the all-enveloping, ever-present thought process that you can’t help but sit in and work-through.
J + L
Very exciting!! The above video also contains our first IGTM exclusive, world-premiere, breaking news moment! The video above contains the FIRST public video of Spelunky Gameplay footage. We cut it into the piece, and did some of our ‘film-y stuff’ to it. But for those Spelunky purists out there, we left the footage untouched and tagged it to the end for your unaltered enjoyment :)
Reader Comments (9)
How do I get this music??? Been searching everywhere!!!
The music is by Khonnor.
You can purchase his albums on iTunes. I believe he has two albums up there - 'Softbo' and 'Handwriting'. I'm quite sure that this track came from one of those two. Also, he creates music under the names 'iCactus' and 'Grandma'.
Here's a couple links:
myspace.com/khonnorhandwriting
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khonnor
Why is this video no longer viewable? It was one of my favorite.
Hey Billy,
We're working on getting it back up soon. We just had to do a little bit of modification. Hopefully it won't stay dark for too long.
Sorry about that. Hopefully we can make it up to you with a lot more video coming leading up to (& beyond) the release
Why is this video "Private" and need a password?
Hi Andy,
Unfortunately we had to take it down for a spell in order to rework it a bit. We hope to have it up sometime in the future. Right now, finishing the film is keeping us for reworking what we need to in order to get it back up.
Sorry about that :(
James
It's now about five months since the video was taken down. I know you're finishing off the film, but "reworking" the videos isn't going to cut it anymore. Why aren't the originals still available?
Hi Dave,
Thanks for writing in. Sadly it's still the truth and will have to make due. The video contained some elements that we had to remove and replace.
Completing and mastering the film has taken up every bit of available time for well over the past five months. Though, it is indeed coming to an end soon. From there, we will start to turn our attention to the Special Edition and other extra pieces - of which this footage will be a part of.
Being a small production team (two people) has a huge amount of advantages, but unfortunately has a ton of drawbacks as well. Not being able to execute everything we wish we could is one of those drawbacks.
As soon as we get the time, this piece will return one day. Either slightly reworked or folded into a larger piece.
Thanks for your interest in the piece. We'll get it out to you one day.
Sorry that it isn't today :(
-James
Hay guys, it seems alot of your videos can be seen. It says it's a private video and is asking for a passcode. Oh and by the way, I LOVE the idea of this movie and would be very happy to have it playing somewhere in Chicago area. Im just turning 13 and was making little game parts with blender, scuptris, makehuman, and the I copy and pasted a bit of blender's code for my project into coffee cup to modify it and one day stumbled upon this. Either way, I would really like to know when there is a screening in Chicago or when some of your videos are back up. Thanks!