I know this game has been discussed, but I can’t seem to find an actual thread.
Anyway, ‘The Cave’. An adventure game that’s been stuck in Ron Gilbert’s head for 20 years now. Double Fine is making it, Sega is publishing it. At the start, you pick 3 of 7 characters to venture into the Cave with. All characters have their own motivation and goals within the cave and interactions with each other.
Polygon has an article on the game today.
One of the more interesting things mentioned in the article is that it will be a Metroidvania style adventure game. Lots of reusing areas and backtracking to finish the game. As well as being designed for a relatively quick experience (4-6 hours?), which can balloon up quickly with multiple playthroughs with different characters.
gurgh…what? Hold on i thought we were having a Double Fine KS adventure that every man and his dog was keen on, and this is not it right? Looks cool, but why not KS for this i wonder?
This is a Sega published game. It has nothing to do with the Kick starter. Double fine works on several projects and chose to use kick starter for their classic adventure game.
I’m intrigued by everything I’ve read about the cave so far. A pretty definite purchase for me too.
Yeah love it too, i’ve been a longtime blog reader of Ron’s. Oh those dark days between the Monkey Islands and the KS thing, and now this. Awesome stuff all around, and IF KS can be a vehicle for getting some of the industries brightest back into the fold, then i’m all for it.
Forgot to bump this earlier when the news was new, but The Cave is now available for pre-order on Steam. Its $15. Release date is the 23rd for Steam, XBL, PSN and WiiU
Any reviews out yet? I don’t know where this came from, but the view I hold in my head is this:
Tim Schafer: Brilliantly funny games.
Ron Gilbert: Not funny to me, must be humor funny to other people.
I can’t figure out how I formed that though. It’s lost in the mists of time. I think it had to do with not finding the humor in the Monkey Island games funny at all, and that was further validated when I played the Deathspank demo, I believe, which I also found to be devoid of anything to make me laugh.
Somewhat, in the sense that its a side-scrolling metroidvania style adventure game. It struck me of more of a Lost Vikings vibe, but I’m sure people said that about Trine too. The one interesting aspect is that you do get to choose your three characters out of 7 possible. Leaves the door open for some level of built in replayability (especially since I believe that each character has their own portion only open to them).
Well, I’d say that your initial 3 picks character wise have dedicated cave sections that make up for a good 70% of the overall gameplay. If you mix up your 2nd run with 3 fresh characters then you’ll only have to rehash through about 30%. The rest will be unique to you.
Of course with 7 characters you’ll still be stuck with that extra character and two dupes at the end, unless you do three runs of 2-1 / 2-1 / 2-1.
Reviews seem to say it’s average to above-average so far.
I think there are very few really funny games. I agree Ron Gilbert’s humor is more silly-funny than funny-funny, but I didn’t find Psychonauts to be particularly funny either (I loved Day of the Tentacle, but was too young when I played it to know today if it was truly funny). Part of the problem is that their games use gags, which are hard to make funny unless you make them really gross and surprising (which they’re not). Ever tried watching a sitcom you’ve never watched before? It’s only minimally funny until you get to know the characters and their eccentricities well. But most adventure games have you move from one shallow, stereotypical character (with some gag) to another, so you rarely get the familiarity with the character that’s necessary for the humor to work well.
