The Cave
Factors | Rating | Description |
🎮Gameplay | 4.5 | Simple to pick up, then the cards start ganging up on you. |
📷Graphics | 8 | Basic look, but those arm-flailing little chefs grew on us. |
🎧Narration/Audio | 7.5 | Peppy kitchen tunes, though they loop a lot. |
😮Variety | 6 | New dishes and layouts keep unlocking as you level up. |
🎰Re-playability | 4 | Every run's different, and Heat levels add even more. |
💲Price | 5.5 | On sale it’s super cheap so I would recommend to grab on those days. |
I really wanted to like this one. The concept and the art style pulled me right in, but actually playing it felt more like a chore than a game.
📝Story/Plot without spoilers
🔸 You pick three out of seven characters, like the Knight, the Scientist, the Time Traveller or a pair of creepy Twins, and take them down into a cave that talks. The Cave itself narrates everything, and it's got jokes. Every character is down there chasing something they want badly, and each one has their own area deep inside, like the Knight's castle or the Scientist's lab. Their stories all have a dark little twist, which I liked. I won't say more than that.
🎮Gameplay
🔸 First impressions were good. The cave looks great, the narrator is funny, and switching between your three characters to solve things together feels clever at first.
🔸 Then the puzzles started to wear me down. They felt more complicated than they needed to be, mostly because of how spread out everything is.
------🔹 Each character can only carry one item, so you're constantly walking a single item from one end of a level to the other.
------🔹 Some puzzles need all three characters in different spots at once, like pulling levers together, and there's no way to call the others over. So you walk each of them there yourself.
------🔹 Movement is slow too. Climbing ladders and ropes takes forever, and a lot of the time I had to go a long way back just to move the needle a tiny bit.
------🔹 Get one step wrong and you can lose minutes walking back to fix it. There's no map either, so remembering where you left things is on you.
🔸 There are cool ideas in here, I'll give it that. The Time Traveller's area has you changing things in the past so the level changes in the future, and that kind of puzzle is when the game's at its best.
🔸 And then there's replaying. There are seven characters and you take three per run, so seeing every story means three runs. The shared levels in between, like the mine cart and the zoo, are the same puzzles every time, so you'd be doing all that backtracking again. Each character also has a good and a bad ending, if you want to chase those.
🔸 I've got mixed feelings about it overall. The potential is there, and I can see a lot of people enjoying it, especially Ron Gilbert fans. For me it was okay at best.
📷 Graphics
🔸 This is where The Cave shines. The art style is lovely, cartoony with a slightly spooky feel, and every area has its own look, from an underground carnival to a medieval castle to a nuclear missile silo. The narrator has a great voice and gets some of the best lines in the game.
📝Main Pros and Cons
🟩Pros-
Beautiful art style
The Cave is a hilarious narrator
Cool concept with seven characters and their own stories
Some clever ideas
🟥Cons-
So much backtracking
One item per character makes everything slower
Slow ladders and ropes
Shared levels repeat on every playthrough
Felt more like work than a game
🏷️Tips for beginners
🔸 Before you leave an area, think about where each item needs to end up, because carrying things back later is the worst part. Park your characters close to spots you know you'll need them, like next to levers, so you're not marching all three across the map. Pick the three characters whose stories you're most curious about, since their personal areas only show up if they're on your team. And there's no hint system, so a guide isn't a bad idea if you get stuck.
😇 Verdict
🔸 The Cave looks great and has a cool concept, but the actual playing wore me down. Too much of my time went into walking back and forth for tiny bits of progress, and by the end I was mostly just tired. I wouldn't recommend it, at least not at full price. If you love Ron Gilbert's style and don't mind backtracking, grab it on a deep sale and you might enjoy it more than I did.
Rating: 5/10
Spent more time on ladders than solving puzzles.
