Olmec's Lair

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

The lair is a long hall of temple stone, built by hand in the room editor rather than generated, where Olmec sits asleep in stone with three Cavemen and a Hawkman bowing before him. Below its floor are rock and then a sea of Lava, and the way out is through it: Olmec can only be killed by the lava, and only his death opens the door to the game's ending. Level generation adds the rock and the treasure on the ledges above the hall, but no monsters, traps or shops.

Olmec's Lair is level 16, the last ^[1]. Taking level 15's exit, in the Temple or the City of Gold, leads to the screen between levels and from it to the lair, a room of its own ^[2]. The first clip shows the Temple's way in: the player crosses level 15 and takes its exit, and the lair loads ^[3].

The room editor laid out the hall: its two doors, one at each end, on a floor of temple stone two blocks thick; Olmec in the middle with his worshippers; and, far below, lava six blocks deep on a floor of solid lava ^[4]. The player arrives at the left door and can't move while the view pans right to Olmec and he wakes (Olmec's awakening) ^{[5] [6] [7]}.

Level generation adds walls of temple stone that can't be destroyed on the left, right and top ^[8], and fills sixteen rooms of 10 tiles by 8 from the lair's own room script. It picks a room's layout by its height alone, not by a path to an exit, as the areas' scripts do ^[9]:

Every block is temple stone, or, one time in ten, a stone block ^[14]. Under the rock is a gap three blocks tall, then the lava ^[4], so Olmec's slams, each of which breaks the blocks he lands on, dig him down through the floor and the rock until he falls in.

The lair is never a special level: the roll for a dark level is skipped on level 16 ^[15], and nothing else is rolled for it. The Ghost never comes, however long the player stays ^[16].

The lair has no exit at first. When Olmec dies, the door at the right end of the hall becomes one, with a block of stone that can't be destroyed put under it if the floor there is gone ^[17]. Walking through it leads to the game's ending rather than to another level ^{[18] [19]}. The player keeps what he holds unless it's heavy: a rope or an unlit bomb goes back into his supply, a lit bomb is let go, and anything else goes with him, and the ending draws him holding it if it's one of the items it has a picture for, such as a Rock, a Skull or the Sceptre ^{[20] [21]}. In the second clip, Olmec, sunk in the lava, dies, and the door opens; the player climbs out of the shaft his slams dug on four ropes, runs along the hall and goes through the door to the ending ^[22].

Level generation makes no monsters in the lair: its code for monsters, traps and scattered treasure covers the four areas only ^[23]. The lair's monsters are the room editor's and Olmec's:

No Shopkeeper waits at the lair for a thief or a murderer, as one does at other levels' exits: he's put at an exit as the level is made, and the lair has none until Olmec dies ^{[29] [4]}.

• Olmec, whose only attack is to slam down on the player (Damage).
• Lava, below the rock. One surface tile in four spurts flames while the player is within 240 pixels, every 100–300 steps, and 1 spurt in 8 throws a blob of magma instead ^{[30] [31] [32]}.
• Push blocks. One stone block in four with temple stone under it, and no lava beside it, becomes a push block, as in the Temple ^[33].

The lair has no shops: its room script doesn't make them ^[9]. Nor is treasure scattered over its blocks, as it is in every area ^[23]. Its treasure is on the ledges above the hall, where each treasure tile of a chunk rolls, each roll made once the ones before it fail ^[34]:

The stone holds more, as the Temple's does: about one block in five shows a vein of gold, which breaks into three Gold Chunks, and one in ten a rich vein, which adds a Gold Nugget. Of the rest, 1 in 60 holds a big sapphire, and rarer ones a big emerald, a big ruby, or an item ^{[43] [44]}. With seed 1, a Compass is buried in a block by the left wall, and Olmec's slams dig it out ^[45].

• The room script's header calls the lair "the final boss level (which is only partially randomized)" ^[46].
• The room script has code, like the Temple's, for tiles none of its layouts or chunks has: an entrance or exit, vines, Spikes, push blocks, a chest, an idol, ceiling traps, doors, water, and a Thwomp trap, which no other code makes, so the game never has one ^{[47] [48] [49]}.
• The lair's exit is a different kind of door from a level's exit, the kind the title screen's doors are, which is why the player's step has a branch for what he holds there, as its comment explains: "oXEnd is the child of oXStart, for some reason, that's why this is here" ^[50].
• Any crush in the lair is counted against Olmec, even one by the block put under the exit ^{[49] [51]}.