Moai

Verified against the spelunky.ai port v0.1.10 on 28 October 2026.

This page describes a secret.

The Moai is a statue of a head, three blocks wide and four tall, standing on a ledge of rock in one room of an Ice Caves level. Nothing breaks it. Inside is a sealed chamber with the Hedjet, the crown that opens the way to the City of Gold, and an exit of its own. Around it, the level is an ordinary Ice Caves level, and no message announces it.

Every Ice Caves level rolls for the Moai until one makes it: level 9 one time in 4, level 10 one time in 3, level 11 one time in 2, and level 12 always, so every game that reaches level 12 has had exactly one ^[1]. The flag that it's made is cleared only when a new game starts ^[2]. A game started from the Temple's shortcut, at level 13, never makes one. The Mothership and the Yeti lair are the other branches of the same roll, so neither can share the Moai's level, and neither comes before it ^[3].

Once the level's path is laid, a room of the second or third row, at random, becomes the Moai's, whatever the path had put there ^[4]. It's one of two layouts, each as likely: the statue right of the room's middle or left of it, on a ledge of rock open on both sides ^[5]. The three blocks it stands on can't be destroyed ^[6]. The first clip shows a Moai on level 9: the player makes his way down to its ledge, stops beside it, and heads back left ^[7].

The statue is three solid pieces that can't be destroyed: its left and right sides, each a block wide and four tall, and its brow between them ^{[8] [9] [10] [11]}. Under the brow, a fourth block, three tall and as strong, fills the chamber. It holds, from the top, a block of thin ice, then the Moai's own exit with the Hedjet lying on it, free ^{[12] [13]}.

No message announces the Moai: a level starts with one only when it's dark or a special level, and the Moai's is neither. No Ice Caves level is dark, and the Ice Caves' special levels are the other branches of the Moai's roll ^{[14] [15]}.

Level generation makes the Ice Caves' monsters on the Moai's level as on any other: Yetis and UFOs on the blocks ^[16]. Nothing lives inside the statue.

The way in is the Ankh. When a player wearing it dies on the Moai's level, the Ankh brings him back with 4 hearts and, if the Moai is active, puts him inside it: the block filling the chamber is destroyed, and he appears in its top, on the thin ice ^[17]. Things far outside the view are switched off and the code doesn't see them, so a player who dies far from the Moai comes back at the level's entrance instead, as on any other level ^{[18] [19]}. The thin ice melts under him in 30 steps (1 second), and he drops onto the Hedjet ^[20]. A Teleporter jump can land him inside too ^[3]. In the second clip, the player, wearing the Ankh, drops a Bomb at his feet; the blast takes his last hearts, the Ankh revives him in the chamber, the ice gives way, and he picks up the Hedjet and takes the Moai's exit ^[21].

The Ankh is sold only in the Black Market, so the player has to carry it there to the Moai's level without dying (the Hedjet's page has the rest, and Reaching the City of Gold walks through the whole way to the City of Gold). The Moai's exit leads to the next level, as the level's own exit does ^[22].

Shops, Kali's altar and the Golden Idol's room come as on any Ice Caves level. A shop only takes a room the path left empty, so never the Moai's ^[23].

• The Moai's exit is made with the type "Moai Exit", which nothing in the game reads ^[22].
• The game's draw code has a commented-out line that would print "TRUE" beside the player once the Moai had been made ^[24].