In Double Fine’s whimsical version of the world, there’s a closet full of skeletons miles beneath the Earth’s surface — a place that both grants its entrants’ wishes and reveals the truly rotten things they’re willing to do to get them.
Make no mistake — none of this game’s seven playable characters have even a remote chance of nabbing a Humanitarian of the Year award before they find themselves up for entry into the eponymous “Cave.” No matter how adorably they’re designed — even the glowy-eyed Twins with their dark, gothy charm — each of the game’s protagonists harbors a sinister, self-serving purpose for plumbing the Cave’s depths. The Adventurer just wants to nab fame and fortune, for instance, while the Scientist is eager to trade in scads of cash for her smarts no matter the cost to humanity.
Not all of them wear their avarice or self-interests on their sleeves at the outset. Throughout your journey — you can take only three characters on a given playthrough, so the game encourages you to complete all their storylines across multiple sessions — their tales unfold to reveal the true nature of their individual quests. None of them are particularly surprising: what plays out through the omniscient narrator’s often funny, self-aware, Twilight Zone–esque ramblings and through discoverable Cave Paintings illustrating each character’s slippery amoral slope feels more like cartoony fables without any overarching lessons or closure attached. Which makes them intriguing, for sure, if not particularly satisfying. Are we meant to take these tiny slices of murderous wrongdoing as merely wry observations? Or as bite-sized bits of finger-wagging at “the evil that hides in all men’s hearts,” to paraphrase that ol’ Rod Serling trope?
The Hillbilly’s carnival stage packs in plenty of devilish puzzles — and a Ferris wheel for good measure.
The Knight yearns for honor, with no clue how to earn it.It’s hard to say, as The Cave leaves, perhaps purposefully, no discernible breadcrumb trail for players to follow; you can almost feel the game shrug at your struggles. It’s an ambiguity that some will dismiss or embrace, while others will be left scratching their heads in frustration — and as a result, the storylines end up feeling like lightweight vignettes simply meant to frame the game’s straightforward but fun adventure-game spirit. And we’re totally okay with this.
What The Cave does splendidly is find ways to incorporate all three of the characters you’re controlling in a given playthrough (you swap between them with the D-pad) in some rather involved puzzles. The game isn’t based on combat or stealth, or even on platforming elements; instead, you’re dropped into very contained, very lovingly detailed maps with a finite number of items at your disposal (you have no inventory) and one exit. How you use, combine, or wield those items is key to progressing, which often leads to multi-part solutions that are as silly as they are clever.
For instance, in one area you’ll have to figure out how to break a bridge by luring a hulking cave monster onto it, but he’s not about to budge unless you can find a way to snag a hot dog (his favorite snack) from a nearby vending machine. Trouble is, that machine’s being guarded by a rather upset monster hunter whose podcasting session has been interrupted by the dead battery in her recorder. How you get all those various loose ends to meet up can be an involved process, and getting a handle on the game’s goofy logic is key. After all, even with The Cave’s droll nature, its puzzle solutions still involve a good degree of logic, and once you get on its wavelength, there’s little standing in your way…except maybe a grumpy princess who dreams of being an electrical engineer, or a launch code itching to be deciphered with a Special of the Day menu.
Cave Paintings tell the tales of our anti-heroes, with some differences from the plots in their play-throughs, so it’s worth finding them all.
Double Fine’s patented humor shines through.Each character has their own unique area to explore and power to wield — the Monk can teleport objects, for example — but each new game features the same basic layout of all non–character-specific environments you’ve already been through. Familiarity means you can zip through them at lightning speed in return visits (the solutions in the retread areas don’t change), diminishing some of the appeal of replaying the game outside of seeing the remaining characters’ quests. You can invite up to two friends to traipse through puzzles with you in local co-op play, but without a split-screen option, it can be irritating when a buddy drops out of view on the screen with no way to track their whereabouts, especially given the verticality of the game’s maps.
Then again, The Cave’s charms aren’t meant for longevity or deep, thinky examination. Its breezy morality play feels more like a small, self-contained, eccentric dose of dark humor, best suited for whiling away a gloomy afternoon spent indoors.
Want some New Grog to wash down that yummy hot dog? You’ll have to power up those machines first.PUBLISHER: Sega • DEVELOPER: Double Fine • ESRB: Teen • MULTIPLAYER: 3 in local co-op on same screen • ACHIEVEMENTS: Quirky and plentiful • COST: 1,200 Microsoft Points ($15) • RELEASE DATE: January 23, 2013
+ Some clever, three-character puzzles; silly sense of humor.
+ Quirky art matches its characters’ delightfully sinister storylines.
– Feels slight in terms of length, plot, and depth; framerate stutters; begs for split-screen co-op play.
? Why so much wanton destruction of canned corn?
