Shopkeeper

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

Every shop has one, standing by his wares; the shops' pages (General Store, Kissing Parlor, Dice House and the rest) say what each sells. He's calm until the player steals or does damage; then he runs at the player, jumps after him, and fires a shotgun whose pellets take 4 hearts each. A theft is remembered: for a level or more afterwards a Shopkeeper waits at each level's exit, and once one has been killed, at every exit for the rest of the game.

Standing in his shop, the Shopkeeper turns to face the player. The first time the player is in his shop's room, he welcomes him to the shop under a name drawn from 32 ("WELCOME TO TERRY'S SUPPLY SHOP!") ^{[2] [3]}. While the player holds an unpaid ware in his room, he follows the player, faster the farther away the player is, up to 3 pixels a step, and stops beside him; he goes back to standing once the ware is paid for or put down ^[4]. A ware held near him shows its price and the key to buy it ^[5].

Angry, he runs at 3 pixels per step (90 per second), turning toward the player when they're on the same level, at most every 20 steps, and turning back at walls; he jumps at a wall in front of him, and at a gap when the player isn't below him ^[6]. His first angry step makes every item on the level free ^[7].

He fires his shotgun at a player in front of him, nearer than 96 pixels and less than 32 pixels above or below his middle, every 30 steps (1 second) at most: 6 pellets, spreading a little up and down, and the kick pushes him back ^[8]. Each pellet that hits the player takes 4 hearts and knocks him down, with no pause between hits, so one pellet takes all four of the hearts the player starts with ^[9]. His pellets don't hurt monsters, or him ^[10].

Touching the player when he isn't calm, he grabs him and throws him over his head, stunned; the throw costs a heart when the player hits a wall or lands. Under a block, with no room to throw, he hits the player for 1 heart and knocks him back instead ^{[11] [12]}.

The first clip shows a theft: the player buys a parachute, then jumps out of the shop with a compass he can't afford. The Shopkeeper shouts "COME BACK HERE, THIEF!", chases him, and shoots him dead.

A Shopkeeper waiting for a thief (below) is on patrol: he stands for 20 to 50 steps, then walks a step one way or the other, at 1.5 pixels per step, and stands again ^[13]. His walk checks for a wall at his head's height in front of him, not for a floor, so in open ground it stops after one step and he coasts to a halt: he shuffles rather than walks ^{[14] [15] [16] [17] [18]}. He turns on the player who comes nearer than 64 pixels (and isn't more than 16 pixels below his middle), or who is right above or below him ^[19]. In the clip, a patrolling Shopkeeper shuffles to and fro; when the player walks up to him, he fires, and the blast takes the player's four hearts.

A stunned Shopkeeper drops his shotgun, and gets up angry once he's lain on the ground (or been held) for 5 steps after a stomp or a Spear Trap, or 20 after a bullet ^{[20] [21] [22]}. Without it he can't shoot, but he still grabs and throws; running into a loose shotgun, he picks it up again ^[23].

In the clip, the Shopkeeper follows the player while he holds an unpaid pistol, and stops once he pays. The player shoots him with it; he falls stunned, dropping his shotgun, gets up angry, and throws the player, who loses a heart.

Killed, he drops his shotgun and 1 to 4 Gold Nuggets, and counts in the end-of-game statistics' Shopkeeper row ^[24]. Crushed in a block, he dies at once ^[25].

A ware is bought by holding it in the shop and pressing the pay key with its price in hand; without it, the player drops the ware ("YOU HAVEN'T GOT ENOUGH MONEY!") ^[26]. A Golden Idol set down on a shop's floor within 80 pixels of a calm Shopkeeper is sold for its value ("PLEASURE DOING BUSINESS!") ^[27]. A Crystal Skull sells the same way, and counts as an idol between levels ^[16].

Each of these angers the nearest Shopkeeper, with its own shout, except that a broken wall and a lit bomb anger every Shopkeeper near the screen ^{[28] [16]}:

Stealing equips some wares at once and not others, by which leaves the shop first ^[16]. Hitting the Shopkeeper also angers him, with no shout: a crack of the Whip, which doesn't hurt him, a thrown item, a bullet, a Piranha's bite ^{[37] [38] [16]}.

The shouts above also mark the player a thief: they add 2 to a count the game keeps, or 3 if it's already above 0 ^[39]. Each level's exit takes 1 off it ^[40], and each new level that starts with it above 0, or after the player has ever killed a Shopkeeper, puts an angry Shopkeeper on patrol at its exit ^[41]. The shops on that level have "WANTED" posters of the player, their Shopkeepers patrol rather than stand, every ware is free, and the Kissing Parlor and the Dice House turn him away ^{[42] [43] [44] [45]}. So one theft puts a Shopkeeper at the next level's exit; a killing, at every exit to the end of the game. Each shop's page covers stealing from it, as the General Store's does.

In the clip, on the level after a theft, the Shopkeeper waiting by the exit leaps at the player as he comes down to it, and the player takes the exit unhurt ^[46].

Hitting a Shopkeeper doesn't make the player a thief: in the pistol clip, the angry Shopkeeper's wares are free, but the player isn't marked ^{[16] [47]}.

The Shopkeeper has 20 hit points ^[1].

A stomp while the player is still rising takes nothing, though it stuns him ^[16]. Killing a Shopkeeper makes the player a murderer for the rest of the game, and so does his death by anything else, Spikes included, which counts as the player's kill ^{[56] [16] [57]}. In the clip, the Shopkeeper chasing a thief walks off a block into a hole with Spikes in it ^[58]. On one of Kali's altars his body is worth half of 12 favor dead, and all of it stunned, if it lies still there for 20 steps before he wakes ^[59]. A Mantrap can swallow him; he comes back out, angry and without his shotgun, when it dies or wakes ^{[60] [61]}.

• The anger script's comment: "Make the nearest shopkeeper angry. RAWR!" ^[70].
• The Stars room's Shopkeepers are a kind of their own, which bleed and vanish 200 steps after they die ^{[71] [72]}.
• A commented-out branch would have slowed him to a walk at a wall he couldn't jump ^[73].