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The Cave
PC (Steam)
Wait… I’m NOT Confused?
4/5 stars
“The Cave” is the brain child of Ron Gilbert, a game writer known primarily for his work on old LucasArts Adventure games, like “Maniac Mansion” and the ‘Monkey Island’ franchise. More recently, however, Gilbert has been associated with misbegotten ventures, such as the first two Penny Arcade “On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness” episodes from Hothead games and the tragedies of ‘Putt-Putt,’ ‘Freddi Fish,’ and ‘Pajama Sam’ from Humongous Entertainment. Fortunately, “The Cave” is much more within Gilbert’s wheelhouse, and he temporarily joined former LucasArts colleague, Tim Shafer’s, DoubleFine Productions for the sake of creating this one game.
Presentation
“The Cave” is a 2.5D Adventure game for up to three players. While the graphics engine is fully polygonal, the game is presented entirely from a side-scrolling 2D perspective. The visuals all have a distinctly DoubleFine flare, with bright colors, stylized and distorted characters, and cartoony animation.
The audio is quite nice as well. The game features an omnipresent narrator who’s voice actor did a fantastic job, plus a handful of fully-voiced non-player characters, who are equally well-performed. The soundtrack is pleasant and a suitable match for the visuals.
The only problem with “The Cave’s” presentation is the fact that there are several bugs within the game, one of which the MJ crew ran into during out playthrough, that almost ruined the entire experience. Adventure games are all about puzzle solving, but when a puzzle fails to load correctly, such a game becomes impossible. During my group playthrough, we reached a point where we were completely stuck, without a clue about how to proceed, all because a Ferris wheel that should have been running wasn’t. We wasted nearly two hours thinking we had suddenly turned into drooling morons because we couldn’t figure out how to proceed, only to discover, upon consulting the Internet for help, that we had been hit by a bug. Not only that, but this particular bug didn’t instantly go away upon restarting the game. We had to restart it several times before we were able to proceed. This process soured our overall experience with the game considerably.
Story
“The Cave” consists of a series of morality tales revolving around a cast of eclectic characters, of whom three can be active within the titular Cave at any given time. The Cave, which talks, providing the narration for the game, acts as a type of Fantasy Island, where people can go to seek their hearts’ desires.
The cast of characters is a mix of wildly varied people from different historical eras. There’s the Knight, the Monk, the Hillbilly, the Adventurer, the Timetraveler, the Twins, and the Scientist. Each character has a dark and twisted backstory, which the Cave forces them to relive as they seek the thing they desire most, but were unable to attain in the world outside of the Cave.
Each playthrough of “The Cave” allows three of the seven characters to explore their own personal narrative, as well as three universal scenarios that play out the same way for any combination of characters. Unfortunately, repeating the universal scenarios in each playthrough becomes repetitive and tiresome quite quickly. Even more unfortunately, each character has both a ‘bad’ and ‘good’ ending, but the ‘good’ ending can only be achieved by playing through the entire game with the same character a second time.
While it is true that “The Cave” is a fairly short game, with a single playthrough lasting about 2 hours, repeating content is generally not considered a good way to lengthen a game. Instead of forcing the same universal scenarios between each character scenario in each playthrough, I would have liked to have seen a different set of ‘filler’ scenarios depending on the combination of characters chose. Furthermore, I don’t like the fact that the cast of seven playable characters must be divided into groups of three. I would have rather seen a cast of six or nine characters, which would have provided either two or three runs through “The Cave” with no character overlap or repetition.
All in all, though, “The Cave” has plenty of twisted humor, as we have come to expect from DoubleFine and its staff of creative writers. The personal character arcs are all entertaining and engaging… the first time, but much like repeating a joke, “The Cave” becomes less entertaining with each subsequent repetition.
Gameplay
LucasArts was primarily known for its point-and-click Adventure games. Both DoubleFine founder, Tim Schafer, and “The Cave” designer, Ron Gilbert, as former LucasArts employees are steeped in the Adventure game tradition and were present during the LucasArts Golden Age.
Thankfully, “The Cave” is an Adventure game. However, it’s not an old-school point-and-click affair. Instead, it takes inspiration from the likes of InterPlay’s “The Lost Vikings” by throwing three characters with a disparate set of skills into a spelunking scenario where they must overcome deadly hazard by picking up objects and using them on other objects.
Each playthrough of “The Cave” requires a team of three characters, who are rendered immortal while within the depths. If a character would die, they instead turn into a puff of smoke and respawn somewhere nearby, making Game Over an impossibility. And since players can choose any combination of characters to take into the Cave, the characters’ special abilities only apply directly to their personal section of the Cave.
As an Adventure game, I found “The Cave” to be remarkably lucid. Far too often, Adventure games require a particular (frequently insane) train of thought in order to make sense of the puzzles. “The Cave’s” puzzles are all rather clever, but never obtuse.
The most interesting aspect of “The Cave,” however, has to be the fact that it is the only multi-player Adventure game I’ve ever seen. Whereas most Adventure games are solitary affairs of player vs. developer, the ability to team up with up to two friends to help “The Cave’s” cast of lost souls find their hearts’ desires is a stroke of genius.
Overall
“The Cave” brings new life to the tired Adventure genre through its quirky DoubleFine humor and the novelty of adding cooperative multi-player to a traditionally lonesome genre. While it has its share of annoying glitches and can get a bit repetitive thanks to poorly-thought-out padding sections, “The Cave” is an enjoyable milestone for its genre.
Presentation: 4/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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