I still don't know what The Cave is, precisely. I know what the game itself is -- it's a visually stylish platforming adventure laced with dark humor that reminds me fondly of Maniac Mansion and Trine -- but the eponymous sentient, manipulative, Empire Strikes Back-like hole in the ground that serves as a moody setting to explore (and a memorable character) is never really explained. It could be Hell, it could be limbo, or it could be something else entirely. In many ways, that sums up my chief complaint with The Cave: it never quite figures out exactly what it wants to be.



The seven playable characters (the Scientist, Time Traveler, Hillbilly, Twins, Adventurer, Monk, and Knight) are all pretty fantastic, each with their own distinctly quirky look and unique special ability. My personal favorites, the creepy, Tim Burton-inspired Twins, for example, are two characters in one that skip along hand in hand, pulling each other up and over ledges and can materialize their spirits when particular puzzles call for them to be in two places at once. Even the Hillbilly, whose big bare feet slap the ground as he runs and double as flippers when using his ability to breathe underwater, gave me some good moments.

This Passage is Blocked

Most of all, the characters gave me a reason to immediately play again. After navigating through the entire six-hour adventure once with the Twins, Knight, and Time Traveler ( each of which I could toggle through and control at any time with the push of a button), I jumped right back in to play with the Adventurer, Monk, and Scientist.

Worth a second voyage, just be ready for repetition.

Each character may have their own look, storyline, and special ability, but how you'll solve a puzzle will never fundamentally change regardless of the trio you're using.
That second run opened my eyes to The Cave's limitations. While each character unlocks their own special levels that make The Cave absolutely worth replaying (you can't access the Carnival level, for example, without using the Hillbilly's underwater breathing ability), I was disappointed to find I could breeze through all the other sections of the game in exactly the same way. Each character may have their own look, storyline, and special ability, but how you'll solve a puzzle will never fundamentally change regardless of the trio you're using.

Thankfully, co-op adds some additional replayability and fun with a partner or two, and I definitely enjoyed showing my girlfriend (she lives in Canada, don't try to find her) the ropes and working together to solve puzzles. However, co-op is also strangely limited. First off, it's single screen, not split screen, and you must still take individual turns when you switch between characters (no simultaneous spelunking here). The Cave is also local co-op only. In other words, you must play co-op on the same computer. Now, many would argue that the PC platform is severely lacking local co-op and it's about time someone stepped up. I'd agree, but add that it certainly wouldn't hurt to have local co-op as well as online co-op and/or LAN support, particularly in a game like The Cave.

A Carnival (and a Castle) in a Cave

Whether alone or with a friend, The Cave's levels are designed around the concept that each character is hiding a dark secret from their past, and these stages look fantastic thanks to the Ren & Stimpy-style cartoon art. The Twins' level, for example, is set in an old Victorian house filled with creaking floors and locked doors, while the Time Traveler visits a museum where, thanks to a clever level-shifting time-machine mechanic, I was able to see how it looked in the prehistoric past, the present, and the future. The widely varied visual levels (there's also a pyramid and medieval castle, among others) for each character create a sense of magical wonder, and they also go a long way in making The Cave feel much bigger than it actually plays.

You'll be surprised where (and when) The Cave takes you.

Platform-light jumping and climbing feels unnecessary and becomes tedious thanks to some loose, wonky keyboard and mouse controls.
Bigger, but not more complex. While The Cave is an adventure game, it's not an old-school adventure like Maniac Mansion. There is no inventory and no pixel-hunting searches of rooms or scenes; instead, there are single items that can be picked up by each of your three characters and carried around until they're used, like a skeleton key that must be carried to a door that needs unlocking. If that sounds simple, that's because it is. This is definitely adventure-light.

The puzzle-platforming is much like Trine, only the solutions to its puzzles are far less dependent on the specific abilities of each character. As I touched on earlier, the only time I ever really had to use a character's special ability was during their personalized level. In the Adventurer's section, for example, you must use the grappling hook to get over various spiked pits. Otherwise, that particular ability could never be used.

Here's a real puzzle: how to remove the Knight from the stone.

For the most part, the puzzles are a sequential process of plugging items in.
The result is a good deal of platform-light jumping and climbing that feels unnecessary and becomes tedious thanks to some loose, wonky keyboard and mouse controls. Too often I figured out a puzzle and simply wanted to complete it, but first had to carry an object from point A to point B and died because of a fall caused by the poor controls. Worse, glitches snuck up and grabbed my characters at various points, like when my Hillbilly somehow fell through the floor and got stuck or when my Time Traveler became superglued to a door. I also experienced a single full-on crash to desktop that came, fittingly, when the Twins set off a stick of dynamite. That's one serious boom.

Worth Exploring

As for the difficulty of the puzzles, there are a handful of good brain teasers. For example, the Zen Monk levels, which include simple riddles alongside the object hunt, require more thinking than trial and error. For the most part, though, it's a sequential process of plugging items in. The only time The Cave really tries to challenge us with a bust-out-the-pencil-and-paper math problem during the Monk's level, Double Fine seems to regret forcing us to fire neurons and provides a web address with a page that straight-up gives us the answer. Whatever happened to hints?

GameSpy, however, is a website that gives away the answer to the riddle of whether The Cave is worth playing: yes. It doesn't hit the ability-powered platforming highs of Trine or the old-school adventure challenge of Maniac Mansion, and it appears the devs struggled to focus and define this ambiguous hybrid. Still, it's a unique, funny, $15 adventure with some terrific characters and dialog, and a memorable voice performance from The Cave itself. I'm still not sure what The Cave is, and I'm not sure Double Fine is either, but I know I smiled my way through most of it -- not once, but twice.

That local co-op only is the real puzzle for me. Tough for my friends to make the trip down into my underground lair to play on the same PC. Still, as a Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion fan, it's tough to pass on Ron Gilbert's latest.