Launching The Cave, the new creation of Ron Gilbert, you expect to see yet another masterpiece. The creator of Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island simply can’t deliver a second-rate product. Or perhaps it’s our warm memories of classic quests that make us think so. The image appears, a voice sounds, and we are immersed in a fairy tale.
The main character is, in fact, the Cave itself. It appears before us as a kind of narrator, with a male voice, who will tell us seven interesting tales. The unique storytelling style, the timbre and intonation of the voice set the players up for a kind story, but the Cave loves dark humor and sarcasm, meaning the stories won’t be all that childish.
At the beginning of the game, we have to choose three out of seven characters who will go on an adventure. Depending on the set of heroes, certain passages in the Cave will open up. Moving forward through the tunnels, the player will find signs on the walls. By activating them, a piece of one character’s story is revealed.
Each of them, by the way, has a special ability that will help in solving puzzles. And considering that this is a mix of adventure and platformer, there’s an immediate hope for excellent challenges involving team interaction. But the deeper you go into the Cave, the weaker that hope becomes. Each hero will have their own "level," where the help of companions will either not be needed at all, or will require just a couple of actions from them. However, between the personal locations, there are also common ones, and one of these will be the first "level."
Completing the first location most vividly demonstrates the game's drawbacks. All the "levels" are multi-story, the heroes climb rather slowly, and you have to move back and forth very often. Especially if you just can't find the right solution. There's no inventory in this quest; each character can only hold one item at a time. At the same time, it's not clear which item will be needed right now. Some rare items you won't need at all. So you end up spending a lot of time running up and down the floors and slowly moving along ladders just to swap one item for another.
Let's get back to the abilities. One can teleport short distances, even through gaps; another manipulates objects with the power of thought; the twins can turn into ghosts to perform two actions at once, and so on. However, there are very few situations where you need to use two or even three characters at the same time. And as for using abilities simultaneously—don't even dream about it. So much potential left unrealized. And this is despite the fact that the game has co-op—you can play through it with three people. But there's little point: there are few shared puzzles, and on the specific character levels, the other two will just have to watch.
It’s also worth mentioning that the heroes are mortal. However, the magical Cave immediately resurrects them. In most cases, death is just a sign that your solution to the puzzle was wrong. But there are also purely platformer-style deaths—for example, falling from a great height. It’s a pity, because it’s much easier to jump down than to spend endless seconds watching the slow movement along those same cursed ladders.
After completing the entire Cave and collecting all the story elements, the heroes return to the beginning. Here, a simple choice determines the ending of each tale. Naturally, there are two—good and bad. For all characters, the negative ending shows us a moral: bad deeds lead to bad consequences. For all except two (let’s keep their names secret), who for some reason have a perfectly fine outcome, which is both surprising and puzzling. In the positive endings, the heroes suddenly find their conscience and morals at the last moment, saving them from misfortune.
And here comes the moment of replayability, which is also not implemented very well. The player has learned only three stories, with four more remaining. This means you have to go through the Cave at least two more times. When replaying the common locations, and by the third playthrough having to go through the levels of two already "completed" heroes again for no clear reason, the enjoyment becomes questionable.
The visual style, location design, narrator's voice, unique humor, stories, characters, and puzzles are all top-notch. But the gameplay turned out to be flawed. Ladders, running around for items, and the small number of team-based tasks—all of this can be forgiven if you only go through the Cave once, with just three characters. You won't get to learn the stories of the others, but that's what YouTube is for.
In that case, The Cave leaves only positive impressions, but that's not enough to call the game a masterpiece. Unfortunately.
