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Oh Double Fine, sweet , sweet Double Fine, how I do enjoy your games. I also enjoy giving you money for the game you Kickstarted, when I can I play it! But, back to the subject at hand. You always seem to make me laugh and also make me jealous at the same time. Not jealous that I didn’t make the game, jealous that I didn’t think of dialogue first. I have to admit, I had only heard brief information on this game and so I went in pretty much blind, which I feel was a good thing.
This game is a console based 2D point and click. There are numerous puzzles that need to be solved and there is not easy way around to figuring one out. When you do happen to figure out a puzzle you feel like a fucking genius, I know I did. I would say it’s the same feeling you received figuring out a room in Portal. The first thing you notice about the game is the narrator, who reveals himself to be The Cave itself. The voice of The Cave reminds me of the Haunted Mansion voice at Disneyland, I was waiting for him to say “There are no windows and no doors. The characters are also great and you want to experience each one, but there’s a catch when doing so. This game allows you to choose 3 characters at a time, but there are 7 total. This means that there are quite a few possibilities when it comes to mixing and matching your group. For the most part, everything in your environment can be interacted with. There are sections where you come across pictures that have to do with one of your characters, when approached and the action button is pressed you are given a picture with a small caption that tells a story about the said character. Now, The Cave tell s you that the experience inside The Cave will be both an adventure as well as a way for the character to find out something about themselves. I suggest you highlight everyone to hear about them before you make a choice.
The art style of the characters remind me of Clayfighter 64 1/3. I picked the hillbilly, the twins and the monk as my three to go through the demo. I don’t know why but I figured this would be the most diverse group of people that one could be picked. As I walked through the save I not only paid attention to where I was going IP noticed the background. There is so much detail in the cave its unbelievable, you would think that there is only so much you can draw within a cave. Again, the narrator comes in to both help and make jokes. Every time I heard the narrator start speaking I got a smile on my face, because I knew that it was going to be funny. The NPC you come across, the gift shop employee, also made the experience great because all you want to do is get what he asks for and get back to him so you can hear what he has to say. I would say that the excitement of hearing a new piece of dialogue would be the main motivator for myself when playing. Of course you’re going to get to know your characters, but you will also get to have the narrator explain it t you and you know he’s going to throw in a joke or two. Usually I get frustrated on puzzle games, but when playing this I couldn’t work my way up to being upset. I couldn’t get upset, because the 20 minutes I took trying to figure out a puzzle, took about a minute to put together and solve once I figured the initial part out. I felt so dumb. You’ll notice a fade in and out during video I captured, it’s not because I was cutting out extra stuff you didn’t have to see, it was because that time was spent back tracking and watching my character stand idle while I thought.
I honestly can’t say enough good things about this game, just the demo makes me want to talk it up as if I made it myself. If you’re looking for a game that hooks you in right from the start and gives you the best tease of your life then please buy this game and play it numerous times. Get your friends and family involved, I assure you there will be laughs all around.