Skeleton

Verified against the spelunky.ai port v0.1.8 on 27 October 2026.

Level generation scatters piles of bones through every area, and 1 in 8 of them is a Skeleton waiting to rise. When the player comes level with one, it stands up and walks toward him; it has no attack beyond touching him. With 1 hit point, it dies to any damage, and falls apart into bones and a Skull.

A Skeleton starts out as a pile of bones on the ground, which falls if the ground under it goes ^[5]. When the player is within 8 pixels of the pile's middle in height and 64 pixels of it across, the bones rise; when the rising animation ends, the pile is a Skeleton ^{[4] [6]}. The pile only does this while it's on screen ^[7]. The clip shows a pile on a Jungle graveyard level rising as the player runs at it, and the player jumping on the Skeleton as it stands up.

A new Skeleton faces the player if he's there yet; one from a custom level's tile K is made before him, and faces right ^{[8] [9] [10]}. It stands for 20 steps (0.67 seconds), and then walks the way it faces at 1 pixel per step (30 per second), turning around at walls ^{[11] [12]}. It doesn't stop to rest, and it doesn't turn at the edge of a ledge, so it walks off (Trivia). It only acts while it's on screen or just off it ^[13].

When the player touches a Skeleton without stomping it, he loses 1 heart, is knocked away from it, and blinks, invincible, for 30 steps (1 second) ^[14]. This is the touch code most monsters share; the Skeleton has no attack of its own. A pile of bones that hasn't risen does nothing to him.

A Skeleton has 1 hit point, so any damage kills it ^[15]:

A pile of bones that hasn't risen isn't a monster yet, and nothing hurts it.

A Skeleton that dies falls apart into three bones and a Skull, thrown upward ^[25]. The clip shows the Whip breaking up a Skeleton that walks at the player; its Skull shatters as it lands. Skeletons killed count toward the player's kills, and the screen between levels draws a Skeleton icon for each ^{[26] [27]}. One that Spikes, Lava or a Spear Trap killed doesn't count ^{[28] [29] [30]}.

Level generation leaves piles of bones in the Mines, the Jungle, the Ice Caves and the Temple, as one of the things it may put on a block with open space above it, after the rolls for the things before it have failed. The chance depends on the spot and on the level number ^[31]:

Each pile has a 1 in 8 chance of being one that rises as a Skeleton; the others are plain bones with a Skull beside them, and never rise ^[35]. On a graveyard level in the Jungle, each chance is 11 times higher ^[36], and the graveyard's rooms have piles of their own, every one of which rises (Trivia) ^[37].

In custom levels, the level editor's tile K is a Skeleton, ready to walk, and its tile k is plain bones with a Skull, which never rise ^{[38] [39]}.

• A pile that will rise has its skull in the pile. A pile that won't has no skull in it, and a separate Skull lies beside it.
• A pile only rises for a player at about its own height, so passing above or below it leaves it be.
• A Skeleton walks off ledges, so one on a platform doesn't stay there.

• The Skeleton's step event has two blocks commented out that would have turned it around at the edge of a ledge and stopped it at random, the latter the same lines as the Caveman's ^{[40] [41] [42]}.

• For each bone tile in the graveyard's rooms, the code chooses between rising bones and a Jar with if (rand(1,2)), but rand(1,2) is 1 or 2, and both count as true, so it always makes bones ^[43]:

  else if (tile == "p")
  {
      if (rand(1,2)) instance_create(xpos, ypos, oFakeBones);
      else instance_create(xpos+8, ypos+10, oJar);
  }