Enter The Cave by Dark Priest reviewed by Maladroit Him (Brandon Abley) Medium: RM2k3 |
Impression This is an incredible peace of work. Why do I feel this way? Because it's fun. It's definitely not a peace of art. I don't feel like a better person because I've played it. The author of this game, actually, said that it has absolutely no story. And he's about right. But that's not what's important. This is a game about puzzles. It doesn't have any combat whatsoever and it has no stats. It does have a ton of items, though, such as an item that lets you control how fast you run (which you grab JUST as the walk speed gets slow and annoying), rope items which let you descend cliffs at specific place, a clock that tells you how long you have played, et cetera, et cetera. As you would assume in a game about puzzles, this game has lots of them; from dodging from cover to cover as huge golems throw rocks at you, slippery icey rooms where you slide from wall to wall, an annoying mine cart game where you flip switches until the tracks are all lined up properly, and tons others. There is one "fight," which is the final boss, but it's a totally shitty fight and it made me want to not beat the game. But I had gone so far. Overall, the puzzles are amazing. They are classic, stereotyped RPG tripe at its finest. And while I've seen puzzles of these sorts a hundred times, they were beautifully executed in Enter The Cave. Keep in mind that the puzzles are sometimes incredibly hard and sometimes endlessly frustrating. If the player is not patient, he will not make it all the way through this game, and that is the only major glaring flaw in this game. As said above, the mine cart ride is a pain in the ass. I hated it and wanted it to die. The final boss was frustrating, since there wasn't anything you could do to win other than keep trying until you got lucky. And the ghost races where you run around in circles, trying to get to the center of a maze while ghosts try to catch you, are so hard I would not have finished them if they were not so near the end of the game. Because of the rough spots, this game suffers horribly at times. Technical Graphics The graphics are a mixed bag. They consist entirely of RTP graphics, so there's nothing someone who's played an RM2k3 game hasn't seen. Sometimes, though, the use of these RTP graphics made me absolutely giddy. The author, for example, would use picture events to make for really interesting zoom effects that the RM2k3 engine would not normally allow for. While it was a really simple technique, consisting of print screen and simple picture manipulation commands, it had a nice effect that I haven't seen too often. The RTP wasn't always all that well used, either, with some horribly ugly pallette-switching and tile placement problems. The "world map," for example, was so awkward looking that I still can't figure out whether it was inside and it was raining for no reason or if it was outside and there were serious scale issues that the author had. Either way, the author loses points for poor to average tile placement. There was very little animation, and the game was very plain to look at when not showing some sort of special effect. Code The coding here is extremely basic and sometimes unprofessional, such as using the default menu for a game where all you can do is switch items. There isn't too much to be wowed at about the code. What is interesting about the coding, though, is its creativity. The minigames and puzzles are phenomenally cool, even if there wasn't a single thing in there that made me wonder, "how did he do that?" Sound No impressive sound coding whatsoever. The save point sound effect was super cute, and switches made animal sounds when you flipped them, but the sound effects were all RTP and mostly very annoying. Artistry There was nothing artistic about the technical aspect of this game. The graphics were RTP, the music was either RTP or ripped off of obvious sources, there was absolutely no plot, and the resources the author did have he did not often use very well. The only artistry to be found in Enter The Cave is with the simple charm of the whole thing, and that charm it has in spades. The puzzles are creative and endearing, and everything about the game screams, "you are playing a ridiculously innocent game about a little kid!" However, saying this game is much a piece of art is like saying 40 Days 40 Nights was a piece of art. While it's definitely entertaining and creative, there's nothing profound about it. Play or Not? Definitely Play. Reviewer's Notes cool camera effects |