The Cave Game Review

Descend to your darkest place, unearth your heart's desire and fall to temptation. In my case, constantly restarting Double Fine's new, 2D adventure/platformer, during a short, (mostly) pre-hint review period, was totally meta. An object was erroneously immovable, items and people got stuck, or lost, and I accidentally wiped the game's only save at the start menu. Anyway, after four lengthy, failed attempts, I feel very qualified to comment on replayability, in a game that hinges on it.

So, with seven characters, from hacker scientist to temporarily invincible knight, only three will simultaneously tour The Cave. Depending on who you take, the linear route will be different, as each is diverted into a unique area, through four common. The only real way the game recognizes character combinations is, for example, that you might hack through a door with the scientist, rather than bringing two other characters to pull levers. It's a missed opportunity.



Each character has a light story, delivered on slides and in their unique area. There is no interplay between characters or, indeed, dialogue at all. They're tools of the player, seen most obviously in the pyramid level, pushing pressure plates they can't possibly understand. Two or three characters often need to be placed to solve coinciding parts of a puzzle and expect a lot of backtracking, which is not so obvious before you've solved the common areas, but utterly transparent in subsequent playthroughs.

Jumping and activating special abilities, as well as pushing/pulling objects, involves pretending the mouse cursor is a gamepad, and learning keyboard commands if you can't hit the mouse wheel without rolling it. When you're sick of climbing ladders incredibly slowly, there are some places where falling and respawning becomes a good option. Movement would have been vastly improved with a "follow me/hold position" function, too.

The game allows each character to carry and use one item at a time, with combinations occurring only rarely. At their best, puzzles deftly walk that line between making you feel smart and stupid, in equal measure. One solution in the scientist quest was absolutely hilarious. At worst, you're forced to go back for the same interaction three times, over a largish area. Puzzles are also relatively straightforward, generally requiring fewer steps than, say, Day of the Tentacle; mostly easy, sometimes challenging.

But, you know what? The Cave didn't, ultimately, better me. With a little help from the "9" key, to kill and respawn characters stuck in walls, or forever falling, I saw the ending once. It was the only time that character repetition really, really worked; redemption, if you will. As kind of a masochist, I can forgive a buggy, backtracky cave that is otherwise beautiful on the inside, at only five dollars more than console price. (I played it for free.) But, proceed with caution.


Developer: Double Fine Productions
Publisher: SAGA
Price: $19.95
Out: Now
Web: thecavegame.com