Olmec

Verified against the spelunky.ai port v0.1.10 on 27 October 2026.

Olmec waits at the end of the game, on level 16, Olmec's Lair, above a sea of lava, with a Hawkman and Cavemen bowing before him. He is four blocks wide and tall, and he isn't a monster as the game counts them but a moving block of stone: nothing the player carries can hurt him, and his only attack is to fall on the player. The way to beat him is to make him dig: every slam breaks the floor he lands on, and when he breaks through into the lava he sinks, and the exit opens.

The fight has its phases: the awakening, then hops and slams, with yellow balls between them, until he reaches the lava.

When the player arrives, he can't move ^[8]. The view pans right across the lair, 2 pixels a step, to Olmec ^[9]. 100 steps after it stops, Olmec's stone cracks: the Hawkman bowing to him is flung away, stunned and with 1 hit point, and the bowing Cavemen freeze ^[10]. Two more cracks, 50 steps apart, bare his golden face, and 50 steps after that he hops for the first time, with an alarm ^{[11] [12] [13]}. 20 steps into that hop, the Cavemen get up and charge ^[6]. The hop ends in a slam, and 50 steps after it, the view goes back to the player, who can move, and the boss music starts ^{[14] [15] [16]}. The clip shows the whole awakening, 437 steps (about 15 seconds) from the player's arrival to his first move ^[17].

Olmec rests on the ground, 100 steps after the awakening, 40–100 steps after a hop that lands without a slam and 60 after a slam, then hops: he leaves the ground at 4 pixels per step upward, and gravity brings him down ^{[18] [19] [20]}. For the first 10 steps of a hop he rises straight up; then, if the player is past either side of him, he drifts toward him, speeding up by 0.25 a step to 2 pixels per step and slowing again ^[21]. He stops at walls, and a hop that hits the ceiling breaks the blocks above him ^[22].

If, while he's in the air, the player is lower than his top and within 32 pixels of his middle, Olmec stops dead for 20 steps and then slams down at 5 pixels per step, gaining speed as he falls ^{[14] [23]}. The check skips a slam while he's drifting left at 1 pixel a step or more, but not right ^[24]. When a slam lands, it shakes the screen and breaks every block he lands on ^{[25] [26]}, so he drops through to whatever is below. The clip shows Olmec hopping toward the player, stopping in the air over him, and slamming down as he runs clear, breaking the floor ^[27].

A player standing on top of Olmec rides along with him ^{[28] [29]}.

Once a slam has landed, Olmec has a 1 in 2 chance of spitting three yellow balls before he rests ^{[30] [31]}. Each flies off 2–5 pixels a step to either side and 4–7 upward, falling as it goes ^{[32] [33]}. Where a ball hits a wall, floor or ceiling, it turns into a monster: a Bat, Spider, Snake or Frog, each a 9 in 40 chance, or a Fire Frog, 1 in 10 (the game rolls a 1 in 2 chance between picking from the first four and from all five) ^[34]. A ball that leaves the room is gone ^[35]. The balls don't hurt the player. In the clip above, three balls land as a Snake, a Bat and a Frog ^[27].

Olmec's only attack is his weight. A player who ends up inside him, when he slams down on him, is crushed: he dies with however many hearts he had, and the death is counted against Olmec ^[36]. The clip shows a player who stands still under Olmec crushed with all four hearts ^[37]. Touching Olmec otherwise does nothing: he's a block the player can stand on.

The rest of the danger is what he brings: the Cavemen who charge as he wakes, which can beat a player who stands still to death ^[38], and the monsters his yellow balls make.

Olmec can't be harmed. He's a moving block, not one of the monsters the game's weapons look for, so the Whip, bombs, bullets, thrown items and stomps do nothing to him ^[39]. A bomb can only blow up the floor around him.

Lava kills him. When his feet touch lava, he stops, shakes the screen with a roar of fire and sinks, and once the lava closes over his top, he's gone ^{[1] [40]}. That happens when his slams have dug him down through the floor of the lair into the lava below. In the clip, his last slam breaks through, and he takes 220 steps (7.33 seconds) to sink out of sight ^[41]. His death counts as a kill, and the exit opens: a door of the lair becomes its exit, with a block of stone beneath it ^{[42] [43] [44]}.

Olmec is only in Olmec's Lair, level 16, the room the game goes to after level 15 ^[5]. He's placed there by hand, with his worshippers, rather than made by level generation ^[45]. The level editor has no tile for him.

• Slams dig: leading Olmec to slam again and again in one place takes him down through the floor toward the lava.
• When Olmec stops in the air, get out from under him: he slams down 20 steps later.
• The top of Olmec is the safest place in the lair: he carries a player who stands on him.
• His yellow balls turn into monsters where they land, so a fight that drags on fills the lair with Bats, Snakes and Spiders.

• His yellow balls' collision with blocks still has the code that turns them into monsters, commented out; their step event does it instead ^[46].
• His object's states include DEAD, which nothing sets: he's destroyed the moment the lava covers him ^{[47] [48]}.