YMMV / 1001 Spikes

• Funny Moments: The in-game explanation for how Aban gets all of his alternate costumes, getting repeatedly roped into multi-level marketing schemes by Conseil ending when him standing on a street corner with a sign, wearing the costume and getting heckled by passersby until he delivers an angry Skyward Scream at Consiel. The unlock scene for Space Marine Aban is even better; he happily signs up to be an extra in a sci-fi film and even uses a costume he made himself.
• Sequel Displacement: Its predecessor 1000 Spikes is relatively unknown compared to 1001 Spikes.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Could be considered this to both I Wanna Be the Guy and La-Mulana. Both games are platformers with a One-Hit-Point Wonder protagonist and quick respawn mechanics, and the level design for both features heavy emphasis on traps. However, the former is far more fair with its traps, featuring consistent trap types to the point that keen-eyed players can often spot them before they're triggered, and most traps when triggered offer a split-second window for players to escape. Compare that to the latter, where literally Everything Is Trying to Kill You, consistency and forewarning be damned, to the point that the game relies on Trial-and-Error Gameplay.
  • Meanwhile, both this game and La-Mulana are platformers featuring Indiana Jones-styled Adventurer Archaeologist protagonists who both have troubled relationships with their Adventurer Archaeologist fathers whom they're in competition with, both games revolve around infiltrating some ancient trap-filled ruins, and both games feature retro-style 8-bit graphics (at least the original version of La Mulana does.) However, La Mulana is a sprawling Metroidvania revolving around solving puzzles and riddles, while 1001 Spikes is a linear, level-based affair where the player's only concern is grabbing collectibles and getting to the exit. Also as mentioned above, Aban Hawkins is a One-Hit-Point Wonder, while Lemeza has a life meter and can take multiple hits. The two protagonist's fathers are also antitheses of each other; Jim is The Ace, whom Aban's legitimately unable to match up with to the point that it's revealed that Jim already cased the Ukampa ruins that Aban spends the first half of the game exploring to prove himself, while Lemeza's father Shorn is implied to be a Miles Gloriosus who failed to completely explore the game's ruins, instead lying in wait for Lemeza to reach the Treasure of Life at the end before swooping in to claim it for himself.
• That One Level: 10-4 is a particularly brutal level because of a single segment where you need to short jump over a spike trap and onto an ice block without accidentally pushing the latter. The Hitbox Dissonance of the spike trap makes this section much harder than it should be to the point of requiring an utterly perfect jump to perform, not to mention that this occurs most of the way into the level, meaning a lot of progress every time you fail.