The Cave Catch-All

Malor wrote:

The way Gilbert solved these things before was by giving you 'a pile of X', and then you could use X until you didn't need it anymore. Here, he just gives you one X, and if you don't use it right, you have to make a trek to get another.

Spoiler:

I was seriously bummed you couldn't put multiple dynamites in the bucket

Having to run back and forth for that puzzle kinda sucked. Not exactly looking forward to more of that.

I do think the game would've been a lot more bearable if you could instantly summon your other party members in single player, for the puzzles that need 2 or 3 people to frob things, and if you could zoom out or see a map for the area that you're in. Overall I did enjoy the puzzles themselves, most were engaging without being so difficult that you're stuck forever. However no puzzle was particularly memorable or had a clever solution which is a bit disappointing.

Spoiler:

Although I did find the puzzle where you use a parrot to record the sound of a dog barking because none of your characters can simply speak and remind the hermit about his dog to be a little head slapping. In fact I think the worst areas of the game are probably the mandatory ones with the Miner, Hunter, and Hermit.

I'm having a dumb moment and can't get through the time traveler's puzzle

Spoiler:

made the oil but I know I left a bucket somewhere else in the cave. Tell me I don't need that

EDIT: Got it.

Spoiler:

I never thought to try holding the rock in order to make a well appear. *sigh* Really hoping not every puzzle is going to require doing something with one character and immediately changing to another one like this and the mine cart puzzle.

Malor wrote:

All this endless running back and forth is just unbearable. I'm at 3 hours, haven't finished, and I think I may be done with the game.

I can't believe Ron Gilbert would be associated with this... he was one of the pioneers of the 'can't make mistakes' genre of adventure gaming, but in this offering, you most certainly can, and it will cost you a bunch of time to cross the whole level to get whatever it is that you need so you can try again.

The way Gilbert solved these things before was by giving you 'a pile of X', and then you could use X until you didn't need it anymore. Here, he just gives you one X, and if you don't use it right, you have to make a trek to get another.

This is one of those games where I would love to collar the developer and ask him, quite sincerely, "what the f*ck were you thinking?"

Totally this. I watched Giantbomb's quicklook with Ron Gilbert himself and that cured me from ever wanting to play this game! This epic level always backtracking just screams "work" to me, not fun. Glad I watched that before plunking down my Microsoft points and not after like I almost did.

The time traveler puzzle is the only one I had to look up to see what I was doing wrong

Spoiler:

It's not enough to just have a character block the boulder with their body. They actually have to keep holding it so it's still held in place in the future. I spent like half an hour looking for some other object to keep the boulder in place.

I have to say that I liked the future museum aesthetic of the time traveler's area but otherwise hated the level design. It feels three times as big as any other area because you can go to multiple time periods and it only has like 2-3 actual puzzles in it.

Thank you all for taking one for the team. I no longer have to buy this game.

Yeah, I haven't felt like firing it up again. I think I really am done with it. Most of the levels are explicitly designed to make you spend a ton of time running around, doing the same boring stuff many, many times.

I just don't understand how the man that made Monkey Island could do this. And I don't understand how Double Fine let him get away with it.

I also found it to be very buggy in spots, not ready for a release.

Latrine wrote:

The time traveler puzzle is the only one I had to look up to see what I was doing wrong

Spoiler:

It's not enough to just have a character block the boulder with their body. They actually have to keep holding it so it's still held in place in the future. I spent like half an hour looking for some other object to keep the boulder in place.

That was exactly my problem, except I probably spent more than an hour combing over the area trying to figure it out. I really disliked the fact that I had the item I needed to solve the puzzle, knew where it needed to go, knew that thing factored into the solution, but just couldn't get it to work until I FAQed it. It's no cat hair mustache but a really poor implementation of that puzzle. I certainly understand that they're working with a very limited inventory and vocabulary here for the puzzles but that was a little ridiculous.

The size of that puzzle area didn't bother me that much. It was pretty easy to make mental notes of what parts had nothing more to interact with, so I just stopped searching back through them.

Currently on the scientist's puzzle and that's going better so far.

I like the game, but it's no OMG amazing experience. I don't think this is the sort of game they're likely to make a sequel to, but if it was I'd be curious to see what they do with the feedback they got from this game. I feel like the concept of blending Maniac Mansion's "Pick 3 characters from a pool of 7" with Lost Vikings is interesting, although I feel like it's been underutilized so far with the group I've got. Or maybe the concept works quite well as I haven't felt like "oh, if I only had this character instead!", and since I haven't played with a different configuration it hasn't really been apparent.

The time traveler puzzle stymied me as well; I had to look up a FAQ. The solution came across as incredibly unintuitive to me. Anyway, finished one playthrough, not real keen on starting a second.

I do, however, have the urge to find my old "Lost Vikings" discs and reinstall that. Hmm, actually my PC doesn't have a floppy drive... Wonder if it even works on Win7... Ooh, wait, I think I have a gameboy cart of it somewhere...

Serengeti wrote:

Wonder if it even works on Win7...

Just dosbox it

Coolbeans wrote:
Malor wrote:

All this endless running back and forth is just unbearable. I'm at 3 hours, haven't finished, and I think I may be done with the game.

I can't believe Ron Gilbert would be associated with this... he was one of the pioneers of the 'can't make mistakes' genre of adventure gaming, but in this offering, you most certainly can, and it will cost you a bunch of time to cross the whole level to get whatever it is that you need so you can try again.

The way Gilbert solved these things before was by giving you 'a pile of X', and then you could use X until you didn't need it anymore. Here, he just gives you one X, and if you don't use it right, you have to make a trek to get another.

This is one of those games where I would love to collar the developer and ask him, quite sincerely, "what the f*ck were you thinking?"

Totally this. I watched Giantbomb's quicklook with Ron Gilbert himself and that cured me from ever wanting to play this game! This epic level always backtracking just screams "work" to me, not fun. Glad I watched that before plunking down my Microsoft points and not after like I almost did.

I keep seeing the criticism of the backtracking, and it seems overblown. In the Mine level Shoptroll mentioned (which is the longest backtrack I've encountered so far), it only takes about 40 seconds to traverse from the very bottom of the level, to the topmost point. So even if you do have to backtrack once or twice, it's a very short trip. The feature that seems obvious and is missing is the button press to call the rest of your team to you.

But besides that, I love the Twilight Zone vibe the game evokes by taking these characters with a dark secret and putting them together in weird circumstance. And the voice of the cave is amazing.

It suddenly occurred to me what this game reminded me of.
The Dizzy games!

This in turn just led me to the discovery that people are, to this day, making unofficial (but with the blessing of the Oliver Twins) Dizzy fan-games with Spectrum-era graphics, using a custom made editor.

Well I never.

I keep seeing the criticism of the backtracking, and it seems overblown.

Did you play the Time Traveler's or the Twins' special levels?

Where I stopped playing was in the Zoo, where I needed to go get yet another goddamn sausage. After what I consider the abusive design of the Twins' level, I just couldn't take any more.

Malor wrote:
I keep seeing the criticism of the backtracking, and it seems overblown.

Did you play the Time Traveler's or the Twins' special levels?

Where I stopped playing was in the Zoo, where I needed to go get yet another goddamn sausage. After what I consider the abusive design of the Twins' level, I just couldn't take any more.

I'm playing with the Knight, Adventurer, and Twins. I just started the twins level this morning, but I can see how this one could have a lot of backtracking. I'll check back in when I finish.

I enjoy a lot about the levels I just don't want to do the in between over and over, like the mine one.

Malor wrote:

Where I stopped playing was in the Zoo, where I needed to go get yet another goddamn sausage. After what I consider the abusive design of the Twins' level, I just couldn't take any more.

The Zoo bit really wasn't that bad, and you're apparently 1/2-2/3rds of the way through the game depending on who you pick.

I just finished zoo and twins, and I really don't think the backtracking is that bad. The levels are so compact it just didn't bother me.

edit: I would say that I generally hate backtracking in games (Dead Space comes to mind). I think because the levels here are just a few screen tall and wide, it doesn't feel like backtracking. If you had to go back to the Mine to get something for the Twins house, that would bug me. Just running up and down the stairs a few (or a dozen) times doesn't trigger the backtracking alert in me, but I understand tolerances vary. I'm fully engaged by the art style, animation (love the nervous knight), and the dry narration.

So I finished this with all the characters. Overall I thought it was pretty good. Funny, nice art style, the puzzles themselves are pretty good although not especially taxing. However I do agree with Malor that the backtracking is pretty annoying and largely unnecessary; why can't I press a button and call the other two party members to enter on the side of the screen? Also not being able to just send an object I'm holding to the hands of another character sucks. If you had both those abilities you could pretty much eliminate any backtracking and the game would play substantially smoother, although it would likely expose quite how short the game is. Also the obligatory puzzles are easily the most backtrack filled of the puzzles which certainly increases the irritation if you're completing with all 7 characters.

Spoiler:

Plus there is some pretty annoying level design. Take the charging the battery task at the Zoo, there is really no need that the electric eel tank be all the way back at the section entrance; it could just be in the small empty corridor just past the door/lever puzzle you need to "solve" to get back out with the battery.

That said I really can't see that the backtracking is game breakingly bad but it does knock my opinion of it down a notch or two. Overall it does feel a lot like a proof of concept for a larger and more tightly designed game.

Spoiler:

Also with regards the good and bad endings wouldn't that make more sense if there was a good way to complete the character specific puzzles?

Tip for anyone playing on PC with the Monk:

Spoiler:

Use a controller for challenge 2.

Finished my Time Traveler, Scientist, Monk run last night. First trip through, and according to Steam I spent about 6-7 hours on the playthrough. Primarily because I'm stubborn and spent more time than I should have trying to get through the puzzles without a guide. I'm also finding I'm not really that good at some of the puzzles on my own because I started a second play through and spent 30 minutes trying to get through the first puzzle and had to FAQ it this time around because I forgot to bring the crowbar with me. Guh.

I don't think this is a bad game. So far it's slightly better than average, but not without some flaws. The backtracking didn't really bother me that much, although I really think the worst of it is in the mine cart puzzle set. Why they didn't make the bucket carry multiple fireworks is a really bizarre design choice. The puzzle design isn't terrible, but I wish the game did a better job of nudging in the right direction. It's clear the game is taking some cues from older games, but there's a very palpable lack of feedback at times which is frustrating especially when you've got Item A and you know you need to get it to location C but you're missing logical leap B to glue it together. There's also some weird sequencing issues in the puzzles where you can interact with some objects before you need them, but some objects won't do anything until you need them either. Or at least that's how it seemed to me at the time. I also felt the individual abilities are under-utilized in the generic sections of the game, which is a little disappointing.

I did like how all the puzzles are self-contained and don't require bringing objects forward with you from room to room. That said, the "rooms" are really large in some spots which I think makes the game more tedious than expected due to the sheer expanse of territory you need to cover (hence the constant backtracking complaints). The art style is nice, and the voice for The Cave is pitch perfect. The game isn't really that "dark" to me and I think they did a great job with the voice direction as it evokes the narration from the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney: a winking touch of the macabre, but not going for anything really chilling or "grimdark".

Curiously, I found the game plays a lot better with the gamepad (see previous post) although it's obvious they have some "aim assist" thing going on for the platforming aspects as the game seems to attract the characters to the edge of a cliff or rope/ladder if you're within a few pixels. I think this is done for the KBAM players, but I found the direct control with a keyboard to be a lot more satisfying after trying KBAM one night.

I will definitely complete a second playthrough, but I'm not sure of a third one. There's apparently alternate endings you can get (they're trivial) but I just don't think there's enough reason to go back in more than 2 or 3 times. Currently, I wouldn't recommend buying this at the $15 price. $10 I think is a better price because while it's not OMG amazing, I was entertained but the game has some quirks/flaws which dampen the experience.

This is free this week on PS+. Recommendations of characters to definitely play? I've heard the twins storyline is pretty solid.

I finally went back and finished it, and I've done most of the stories. It's just not a very good game. But, of the stories I've actually done (all but the archaeologist), the twins, the monk, and the time traveler were probably the most interesting. The time traveler one was certainly the most intricate.

But, be warned, the twins' storyline is probably the most backtrack-heavy of all of them. It is super frustrating, and that set of puzzles largely killed my enjoyment of the game.

I liked the Knight, Time Traveler, and Scientist. Just be aware that one of the core puzzles in Time Traveler's section is poorly implemented.

Malor wrote:

But, be warned, the twins' storyline is probably the most backtrack-heavy of all of them. It is super frustrating, and that set of puzzles largely killed my enjoyment of the game.

Really? That wasn't that bad. It's mostly vertically backtracking a couple of times through the floors of the house. Their area isn't nearly as big as the rest of them.

I just finished my first playthrough, which took a few (maybe 5) hours. I really enjoyed the game overall, and recommend it.

I played the monk, knight, and time traveler. I did get stuck for a little bit in the same place mentioned above several times (Time Traveler) but overall felt the length and challenge were just right. For the ones I played, I didn't think the backtracking was bad at all, although on a second playthrough I could see how some of the areas

Spoiler:

(particularly the mine)

might be a bit tedious on a repeat.

I really liked the way the gameplay and art design tied into

Spoiler:

the morality play component.

I though that component of the game was fabulous, and really brought a smile to my face. It reminded me of Psychonaughts in the good way.

Really glad I picked this up.