“I was just hanging out with Tim a couple years ago and I was telling him about this idea and he thought it was really great and said, ‘Well why don’t you come to Double Fine and let Double Fine make that game?’” Ron Gilbert, one of the minds behind such adventure game masterpieces as Maniac Mansion and the Monkey Island series, had the idea for The Cave bouncing around in his head for nearly twenty-five years by the time he had this conversation with Tim Schafer, founder of Double Fine and Monkey Island co-designer. When The Cave was originally conceived it was limited to a cast of three, somewhat dull adventurers. Over time, Gilbert adapted it into something more similar to Maniac Mansion. Players choose three people out of a motley crew of seven, each with their own special skills and hidden reasons for wishing to enter the cave. To see every story unfold, we’ll have to play through three times-about six hours of total gameplay, depending on your ability to solve puzzles.
“The hillbilly carries a torch for the Amazing Two-Legged Lady,” the cave informed us as we tumble into a subterranean carnival, where the hillbilly’s story begins. He wants to earn the love of the Two-Legged Lady by gathering enough tickets to buy her a pink, stuffed bear. Our first ticket is stolen right out of the hands of a child. It’s not the nicest thing to do, but it’s all in the name of love.
From there- as can be expected in a carnival- the tickets are gathered by taking part in a handful of games, all rigged of course: A strength test with no obvious way of hitting the bell at the top; a weight guesser who is always right; a color wheel where you must guess which color will appear next, an impossible feat unless you can predict the future; a dunk tank which traps you inside. Luckily, we can lie, cheat, and steal our way around all these obstacles. All these games are basically cons anyway, so we shouldn’t feel guilty, right?
We locate a sledgehammer for the strength test. We send the hillbilly- whose ability allows him to hold his breath for long periods of time- into the dunk tank. We get a fortune telling machine to tell us what color will appear on the color wheel next. That’s four tickets down.
The last is the trickiest. No matter what we do, the man guessing our weight is always right. We try placing all three adventurers on the scale. We try having one of them jump off just before he guessed. Nothing works. We venture through the carnival until we come across the Man of Ordinary Strength. At his feet sits a lonely barbell he won’t miss. We carry this with us onto the scale; still no good. Even with the new weight the man is correct. Then we remember stumbling into a magician’s disappearing act elsewhere in the carnival. We return to him and set our newly acquired weight on his table. Presto! The weight disappears, becoming invisible to the naked eye. Grabbing the invisible weight we trace our steps back to the scale and stump the carnival worker. We finally have enough tickets (and the wrench we’ll need for that valve we saw earlier) for the hillbilly to win his love over.
Unfortunately, while we were off gathering tickets the Amazing Two-Legged Lady was wooed by another: The Man of Ordinary Strength. All our hard work just swirled down the drain. This won’t do at all. In a fit of rage we steal another ticket from the child we encountered in the beginning and return to the prize box where a lighter is now waiting for us. Armed with flames we set fire to a stack of hay bales near the Two-Legged Lady and buff suitor.
“The Hillbilly carries a torch for the Two-Legged Lady” indeed. The demo ends with a roaring inferno and we exit the carnival to the sounds of screams.
PLATFORM: XBLA • PUBLISHER: Sega • DEVELOPER: Double Fine • MULTIPLAYER: 3-player local co-op • RELEASE DATE: January 2013 • FOR FANS OF: Puzzles, head scratching, dark humor
