Spontaneous Sunday: The Cave

Welcome to another Spontaneous Sunday, this week I have played The Cave (2013, Double Fine Productions, Xbox One via backwards compatibility). This is a game that I have heard mentioned a lot during my time as a games design student, so when it was offered free on Games With Gold in January, I had to get it and add it to my Spontaneous Sunday game backlog!

"The Cave is a puzzle-platform/adventure video game developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Sega in January 2013 on the PlayStation Network, Nintendo eShop and Xbox Live Arcade storefronts via the PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360 consoles and on Steam for Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux. The game was created by Ron Gilbert, building on an idea that he has had for nearly twenty years about a cave that lures people into it to explore their darker personality traits."

- Wikipedia on The Cave

What do I expect from the game?

I have heard and seen quite a lot about The Cave and, from what I've heard, its a well-designed and charming game that allows you to pick 3 characters and navigate the cave with them. Each character has different mechanics that allow them to overcome obstacles and take different routes, and the way in which the characters mechanics complement each other affects the gameplay.

I expect the game to focus primarily on puzzles rather than enemies to challenge the player. I expect its gameplay and puzzles to be well-designed and carefully considered by the developers, and I also expect the game to have a nice art style, probably with low-poly models, hand-painted textures/backdrops and some interesting environments.

First Impressions - What do I think of the game in its first few minutes?

The game begins with a monologue from The Cave itself, which has a voice and a personality and introduces us to the premise of the game. There are 7 characters, each with their own story, and we will be choosing some to take into the cave and play the game as, while also learning about their personality and story along the way. I was then presented with a line-up of characters stood in a forest-y area just outside the cave. Hovering over each character prompts The Cave to give a short description of them, and their motivation in exploring the cave. I was instantly taken with the game's art style. It has a very nice, stylised, hand-painted feel from the very beginning. The opening environment is charming and detailed, with moving clouds, a crackling campfire, gently waving grass and particle effects. The game is played in a 2D plane, but has 3D environments and art.

The 7 playable characters.

Collecting the crowbar.

My first character pick was The Adventurer as I just liked her "early aviator" vibe. I began to run around the environment and get to grips with the controls. The controls are very simple and all each character could do was jump and move around. I headed left to find the cave entrance barricaded, then right and found a crowbar with which to clear the entrance. My second pick was The Hillbilly, again chosen because I liked the look of him but also because I liked his story (he's trying to find his true love). I decided to pick the last character at random so I mashed the right button to cycle between them and ended up with The Twins. My band of explorers entered the cave and the journey began.

The Hillbilly, The Twins and The Adventurer!

The fact that you have to take only 3 characters is communicated to the player by a bridge above a chasm, that would break if 3 characters stood on it. I placed all of my characters on the bridge, which broke and they fell deep into the cave, ending up in a pool of water next to the gift shop, which contained a store clerk who sadly stated that the cave was closed - but he could let us in if we provided him with 3 items he could sell. So I headed into a different area outside of The Cave proper and completed a puzzle to find the items.

The first puzzle was undoubtedly well-designed, but might actually have been a bit too tricky considering it was the first, and it took a good few minutes to complete. It involved breaking a well to get a bucket, taking a fuse to power a vending machine, getting a hot dog and putting it on a spike to lure a dragon-esque creature into the path of a crane. The next area saw me draw into a big pool, blow up a rockslide with some dynamite, and find the 3 items - a cursed guitar, a thespianship award and a jewelled skull. Returning to the gift shop clerk, he allowed my character into The Cave proper and the game began properly!

The Cave's gift shop.

Characters with the 3 items for the gift shop.

What do I like about the game? What does it do well?

The Cave has a lot of rather positive points. What stood out most immediately to me was the game's art style. It really is a very nice game visually, with a strong stylised art style including hand-painted and low poly models. The fact that the game features 3D environments adds a lot of depth to the visuals and environments (quite literally!). I've found that almost all the 2D games I've played recently have had at least some level of 3D to their environments - this could be a sign of a wider trend of 2D games incorporating 3D elements so as to "keep up with the times".

The environments and levels in The Cave are one of its strongest features. As I progressed through the game, I realised that the levels you play in a playthrough depend on who you pick to play with. As I chose The Hillbilly, The Adventurer and The Twins, I played a carnival level, an Egyptian-themed level in a pyramid, and a haunted house-style level, for each of the characters respectively. 

Each level was very distinct, both visually and in terms of gameplay, and had its own personality, atmosphere and story. The Hillbilly's carnival level, for example, has a vintage carnival feel, with the goal being to complete puzzles in the form of carnival games to get tickets and win a pink bear to gift to an "amazing two-legged woman" to woo her. This backfires however, and the hillbilly ended up burning the whole carnival to the ground!

The carnival burning at the end of The Hillbilly's level.

Each level ends with it's character committing an evil act like this, as the games creator, Ron Gilbert, made the game as a way of exploring the characters darker personality traits. The environments are further enhanced by the use of particle effects, lighting, atmospheric audio and unique, subtle additions embedded into the rock walls between navigable areas (such as a classic London phone box buried in a mine!).

The Hillbilly's Carnival Level.

The Twins haunted house level.

The characters are another strong feature of the game, and they are very important to the whole experience in that the players choice of character directly dictates what levels they will play. The characters each have their own motivations for entering the cave, their own abilities and their own backstory - which is revealed through "cave paintings" hidden throughout the levels. These cave paintings depict scenes from the characters past which contextualise the content of their level, and collecting them requires thorough exploration. There are 7 characters in total, meaning that at least 3 playthroughs are required to experience all of their stories. This is a creative and smart way of adding replayability while still offering a new experience each time. There are even times, in the areas between different characters levels, that you can get a glimpse of small corners of other characters levels, which adds a bit of intrigue to that character.

The Adventurer's first cave painting.

As a puzzle game, the puzzle design and gameplay is a very important factor, and The Cave does this well for the most part, though puzzles can sometimes be frustrating or require a lot of back-tracking. The puzzle formats are all unique, engaging and invariably challenging (at least for a relative rookie of puzzle games like myself). The gameplay itself usually involve a lot of jumping and climbing ladders/ropes to navigate and interacting with objects such as fuses, machinery and pressure plates to complete puzzles and advance. The puzzles are imaginative and often quirky. NPCs also appear every so often to add to the story, though it seems that their ultimate use is to die at the end of the level so as to cast moral questionability upon the characters. The game lacks any sort of enemies and the challenge comes entirely from the puzzles.

The Adventures Egypt-themed level features pressure plates and traps.

Finally, the overall tone of the game is charming and interesting. The fact that The Cave itself is voiced and acts as a narrator gives the game a handy way of communicating with the player. The writing is creative and imaginative, and the game has humorous elements which make it a light-hearted and engaging puzzler.

What do I not like about the game?

The Cave does have a few minor downsides to it. The puzzles can sometimes be a bit too cryptic and unclear due to the game's lack of direction, which can make for confusing and frustrating gameplay, though I am admittedly not a frequent player of puzzle games. Also, puzzles can sometimes require a lot of backtracking. It also feels like there is a lack of challenge from other means at times. There are traps in some of the levels, such as spike pits, but these are fairly easy to avoid. The addition of some more platform elements and dangerous obstacles could have provided a more varied level of challenge.

Another minor downside is that I expected more from the game's music. The game's audio mostly consists of sound effects and ambient audio, without an awful lot of music. The presence of a more substantial and memorable soundtrack could have really elevated the game's appeal even more.

The control page features images of each characters unique mechanic.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I found The Cave to be an interest and charming puzzle game, which has some very positive features and brings some great ideas to the table. The art style, visuals and environments are my favourite feature, with the puzzles and gameplay also standing out. The imagination and creativity put into each of the levels and the characters makes for an interesting and unique experience. The Cave got me thinking about 2D game design and puzzle design, which is an area of game design I don't often consider as I usually play 3D games of other genres.

In around 4 hours playing, I reached the third of my characters levels (The Twins' haunted house level) so I think I was almost finished and I plan on returning to The Cave soon to finish my playthrough - and maybe start again and meet the other characters too!