The Cave

The Cave is a game that desperately tries to be something different, something else than what it is. The Cave wants to bend genres and create new ways of play. But the Cave fails. It’s exactly what it tries not to be, a traditional adventure game. This ends up hurting the game severely. Instead of being proved of its heritage, instead of playing to its gene pool and creates experience, it ignores it all. It fails at all the things that it’s not, and end up mediocre in all aspects.

Odd design decisions seems to be the general them of the game. The game tries its hardest to make the experience as tedious as possible. It’s not the puzzles that will end up breaking the action, instead it’s ham-fisted platforming, and arbitrary rules that break the game. Puzzles in adventure games have always been odd, and rarely too dependent on traditional logic, and that is alright, that is not the fault of this game, and it’s not even a negative. But the extra layer of confusion that the platforming brings is not welcome. Though in a sense, the slow controls and unclear messaging is no worse than the traditional pixel hunting of past adventure games.

It’s a comedy, and a very light one. You never get all that invested in any of the characters, even though all of the characters arcs are somewhat tragic. Maybe it’s the large cast that creates intimacy problems, but more likely it’s the writing. The game can be fun, but it never goes much farther than one liners. The bigger jokes are all too predictable, to ever get invested in.

This is the general problem of the game. Nothing really compels you to play it through. All it’s stories, all it’s jokes, and gameplay loops gets nicely tide up and dealt with within the first 30 minutes or so. Rather or not you prepared to repeat those same stories, joke, and gameplay loops 2-5 times more is up to you.