#CAVE STORY PC#
#CAVE STORY PLUS#

At a first glance, you have the acquainted gameplay of a side-scrolling shooter – consisting of jumping and shooting your enemies while trying to evade their projectiles. You are never let down by the game’s design when you end up dying from environmental damage, and you’ll find that with the control they’ve given you it’s always the player’s fault (and not the game’s).Ĭave Story+ also has its own twist on combat.

By holding the jump button, you can reach higher places with impressive precision a move which is especially useful on the later spike-filled areas. Not only that, but the player also has total control over the platforming bits – mostly due to Cave Story+’s analogue jump mechanic. Traversing through the world of Cave Story+ is pleasant enough by itself, in a way that you almost feel as if the main character is “sliding” as he walks – the sound of his fast-paced steps blending perfectly with the background soundtrack. There is also a nice balance between platform and combat obstacles, and the gameplay mechanics for both are tuned to a nearly perfect state. In this matter, I must note that the game excels in creating compelling challenges, and – in turn – properly rewarding the player when they are finally surpassed. It’s a microcosm for the overall feeling of exploration that Cave Story+ brings up. Naturally, Mimiga Village then works as a kind of hub-area – somewhere from which you progressively get access to many different levels and places.

Helping these creatures is the main objective of the game. As we come to this point, it’s quite obvious that it’s going to be your job to help them – and you will. Once you get out from the tutorial caves, you find yourself in Mimiga Village a place inhabited by rabbit-like creatures that are suffering from the influence of a mad scientist. This swaps the shoot and jump buttons, allowing you to play in a manner more similar to other classic platformers – like Mega Man.Ĭlearly inspired on so many levels by the adventures of the aforementioned blue robot, it doesn’t take long until you see the astonishing Cave Story level design stand out. Fortunately, there is an option in the game’s menu for using flipped inputs. I played with this standard setup for the first quarter of the game, but found it somewhat uncomfortable (and not very intuitive). You’ll find that both Y and A are used for jumping, B shoots your equipped weapon, X opens the inventory, the shoulder buttons allow you to rotate between your weapons, and with the down button you can interact with the environment. This short scene acts as the game’s tutorial, teaching you the basic standard controls. Waking up as a small, sentient robot lost in some remote caves, you are soon guided through a pathway – ending in the acquisition of your first weapon.

#CAVE STORY PLUS#

This plus edition even has a nice new addition in the form of character’s portrait animations a small feature that surprisingly helps in making the many NPCs even more charismatic. You start by watching a short dialogue that does not make a lot of sense at the time, but portrays the feeling of how the characters interact with each other. Narrative-wise, the very beginning of the game details how the story takes place. Leap forward to 2017, and with the release of its plus version on the Switch, Cave Story has become somewhat of a classic itself – and may already worthy of your time and money in its base state, let alone this plus version. At the time, the game caught people’s attention for doing a somewhat new thing at the time – it looked at the classical games of the past for inspiration, and appealed for the nostalgia of titles such as Mega Man and Metroid.

#CAVE STORY PC#

This all started somewhere though, and if you have never heard of (or played) one of the many versions of Cave Story, you really should get to know how amazing the indie genre origins are.Ĭave Story’s tale begins with its first release in 2004 as a freeware PC game. As the industry grew however, the ambiguous border between AAA and indie games has become more and more blurry – right up to the point that you now see big companies that appeal to the nostalgia, as well as small indie teams that push up the technical barriers. One of the very first indie gems shines brightly on Switch!įor quite some time, labeling a game as indie was usually a guarantee for it having retro-inspired visuals, chip tune sound effects, and nostalgia-based gameplay.

Cave story