Skeletons facing right

Verified against the spelunky.ai port v0.1.11 on 28 October 2026.

A Skeleton faces the player when it's made, and walks toward him. It can only do that if the player is there yet, and in a custom level (the level editor's) he isn't: the level's tiles come first. So a custom level's Skeleton faces right, wherever the player is.

A Skeleton placed in a custom level walks right, away from the player, until it reaches the wall: it's made before the player, so it doesn't turn to face him ^[1].

A Skeleton's create event faces it right, and turns it left only if there's a player, left of its middle:

LEFT = 0;
RIGHT = 1;
facing = RIGHT;
if (instance_exists(oPlayer1))
{
    if (oPlayer1.x < x+8) facing = LEFT;
}

Its walk turns only at a wall ^[2]. A custom level makes its tiles first, the level editor's K among them ^[3], and the player after them, at its entrance ^{[4] [5]}. So when a tile's Skeleton is made there's no player, and it keeps facing right. In the generated levels, Skeletons only rise from piles of bones while the player is there, and turn to him ^[6].

Make a custom level with a K right of the player's entrance, and play it: the Skeleton walks right, away from him. The level editor's test does the same. The replay of the clip's staged scene, on a custom level, has a Skeleton right of the player: it starts walking right, away from him, and turns only at the wall ^[7].

The spelunky.ai port reproduces it exactly: it's in docs/quirks.md's list of the 1.1 source's bugs ^[6], and the oracle's fingerprint of the replay pins the Skeleton's facing. No option turns it off.