Quick Look: The Cave – with Gameplay Video

The Cave is a mix between platforming and adventure that’s created by the Double Fine team, with Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer serving as directors, designed to show off the best elements of both genres.

I chuckled for the first time less than one minute after starting the game, as the main storyteller revealed that being a talking cave tended to hinder his dating life, and this early remark sets the tone for the experience I had with the game in the first hour.

The Cave is not laugh out funny yet, but it delivers constant small delights, linked to both the way the characters react and the narration coming from the magical cave that guides the player and comments on his performance.

At the start of the game, seven very different characters are presented to the gamer and he needs to choose three in order to use in the game.

The initial choice is locked in for the duration of one campaign and restarts are required in order to experience all the content that the game has to offer.

In order to succeed, players need to use their entire team and make sure that they thoroughly explore the tunnels that make up the cave from the game title.

I’m not too deep into the game at the moment and the puzzles so far have been fairly easy and interesting, although the developers promise that the difficulty does ratchet up as the player continues his descent.

It will be interesting to see whether Double Fine manages to keep its story-based promise, to create intermingling threads for the three characters the player uses and reveal a dark secret for each of them.

The graphics are also quite charming, although there are some moments when the interactions with the game world are a bit clunky.

Worth a full Softpedia review? Yes.