First of all it is important to approach this game for what it is. Don't expect a Monkey Island because its from Gilbert, and keep in mind this is a $15 game.

With that being said the game is pretty bold in its mix of traditional point and click adventure aspects and jump and run mechanics. You choose 3 out 7 characters, who all come with their unique abilities, background story and areas. You move around by climbing ladders and ropes. There are common areas where you need all three characters to solver puzzles, and specific character areas that need the respective character's ability to be solved. The puzzles are never too easy or hard, but need some critical thinking. The game is not very linear, which will catch many modern gamers by surprise, who are used to heavy handed scripted playing. The humor is dark and entertaining, so are the individual stories behind the characters. The art and mood is amazing in this game. There are also countless references to old Lucasarts Adventure games, such as the Grog machine and Chuck the plant. The annoying part of this game is that you often times have to walk back and forth to solve a puzzle, which is compounded by the fact that you sometimes need to move three characters to a specific location. A character summon function would have been neat here. But that doesn't ruin a excellent gaming experience for a low price. Kudos to Gilbert for trying something money, I hope younger gamers will appreciate it despite lacking the heavy scripting from newer games.… Expand

A pale comparison to the monkey island/maniac mansion-esque throwbacks. The puzzles are far too simple and linear. The humour is not great, and feels forced. The game looks good but has little replay value. I finished it the first time in 3 hours. Far too short of expectations. The promised cave "world" is but a few character-oriented puzzle rooms.

Very disappointing. Its just a platform game with boring puzzles which makes you constantly go back and forth to pick up items. Its NOTHING compared to their previous adventure games. Sad really.

I grew up with Ron Gilbert's adventure but this "adventure" lacks dialogue and story. It is a straightforward puzzle game with three variable stages depending on the three main characters you choose.

I wouldn't consider it a classic adventure, you just move from puzzle to puzzle. I guess it is an okay puzzle but not an adventure. The humor often seems very forced. So basically I would say it is a good 6-7 for a puzzle but for a Ron Gilbert adventure it is a disappointment.… Expand

With clever, compelling puzzle design and thoughtful attention to detail, The Cave will not disappoint fans of the genre. Each character's backstory is lovingly crafted and though sometimes lacking in morals - they are never lacking in charm. Some clunky controls and a few graphical hiccups will not detract from the experience. Well deserving of a place in your game collection.

I really had a blast. It's no Monkey Island for sure, but it is a nice Mix between Last Vikings and Maniac Mansion, with a nice soundtrack and top notch voice work. Every of the seven character has it's own part of The Cave. As you can choose three at a time, this means that you will encounter new stuff in the first three playthroughs, which gives The Cave some nice replay value.

This game is misunderstood by the press hard to imagine why. I'm grew up with maniac mansion, monkey island and all the great lucasarts stuff. The Cave is different according to these old games, but its quite as funny as they were. The most puzzles are well done, they could've been a bit harder to solve, but it was okay. For some people maybe its harder if they dont have much experience in doing adventure games. Backtracking is one of the things, the press most argues about. I really don't know why. Backtracking was quite normal in the good old days. How long i ran through the forest in Monkey Island 1. I love that, Maybe u see something u missed before or some details the graphics art style is awesome... not as detailed as some other games like "trine 2", but too many details would kill the cave's atmosphere anyway. There are problems with gamepad controls for me. I think there is a little bit of input lag. But its ok as well.

To make it short: I love the game, its humor, the voice of the cave... and all the funny things u are going through with the lovely characters. Thanks Ron Double Fine. Hope to see more things coming … Expand

An adventure game without story, dialogue, and for the most part without actual adventuring. Its genre can be more accurately described as a collection of thematical puzzles with some basic character insight as a reward for completing them. If mellow puzzle solving is your cup of tea then sure, this game can help spend couple of evenings, for anything more you'd better look elswhere.


On a more personal note, I am a huge fan of Ron's MI1 and MI2, backer of Reds, I watched and read most or maybe even all his interviews and opinions on games, and need for some kind of innovation in adventure gaming and this was such a huge disappointment... I understand that production values were nowhere near Grim Fandango or TLJ level, so it was silly to expect real modern adventure game, but their priorities and changes they made to classic adventuring formula seem totaly wrong, unncesesary or not done properly. It has mechanics like "only one item per character" that beside being used in couple of puzzles add nothing to the rest of the game except artificially bloating playing time by adding lots of boring and usless traversing. The fact that there is a ton of fedex type puzzles only makes it worse. An inventory shared between all characters wouldn't have made things harder like Ron were saying, it would've make things easier! Not to mention provided additional opportunity for humor. Platforming they added does its job and ok for the most part but really, it is simply an additional mildly annoying obstacle to making progress. Puzzles themselves are usually pretty obvious, the only actual problem that takes time is to walk back and forth executing the solution. And there is abolutely no reason from the gameplay point of view for platforming at all! There are no fast trine-like physics puzzles, no fun arcade parts to diversify the flow of the game, no combat of course, it is not used in any meaningful way (except for couple of tinytiny moments). The way it is, it would've been much more comfortable to simply move characters with classic "click to move around doubleclick to move to next screen" fashion.

Background music is sadly non-existant. Usualy its just "cavey" ambient noises. Occasional tunes do pop up when its appropriate, but all your running around will be done in near silence.

Characters are mutes, and amount of dialogue roughly equals to an average FPS. Having a narrator helps, but narrator doesn't try to make characters deeper, or provide additional insigth or context to what is happening, usually he is just a vehicle for delivering occasional jokes.

Graphics are nice, but nothing breathtaking, a cave is a cave... If it was an ordinary adventure game that would be fine, but considering amount of manual running around the same places and 2D nature of the game, I wish they'd make scenery more diverse. Story... Well you know that there is none. All you have are collectible Psychonauts style pictures, except in Psychonauts they provided an additional insight into living talking characters and here they are all that you'll ever have.

Overall its fine for a puzzler, but disappointing nonetheless.. Note that I completely skipped describing the good parts and there definitely are some, like timetraveller bits, and occasional great animation, and some good puzzles, etc. It is far from being a 1/10 game. Its just I can't bring myself to write about positive sides properly without my general disappointment about the game still coming through...… Expand

A mediocre game. Not surprising though. I don't get all the hype about Ron Gilbert, really. Look at any of the games he has been involved in making for the past 20 years or so. All rubbish. Even if you take Lucas Arts games, the ones he worked on are nothing compared to, say, The Day of the Tentacle or Grim Fandango. Even if his idea was used for TDotT, it was Tim Schafer who brought it to realization. Now Tim brought Mr. Gilbert in... and it was a mistake. Double Fine was producing vivid original games, it was on a streak that felt like it's not going to end. And then came Ron Gilbert and ended it. I hope he won't be leading any more projects.… Expand

What the HELL. People who give this game low scores give them only because it's not an ADVENTURE GAME. It never meant to be!

It HAS adventure elements, like items you can pick up and use with other items in the world. Thanks to this, it has the feeling of a adventure game, but it's NOT an adventure game. It's a puzzle game. People say it has no story (it has), no dialogs (it has!) and no adventuring (IT HAS!!!). I don't understand, they were expecting a point n click classic adventure game? This is NOT the Double Fine Adventure!

Now, about the story: while it doesn't have a one long story that you unveil, it has many short ones, with funny and absurd characters (I loved the ridiculous miner, who in his anger constantly throws dynamites at you while a the same time demands you bring him his mining carts back), Double Fine style all the way. But personally I think that there is one, continuous story in this game. It's the exploring of the Cave itself. The Cave is a really interesting place, with many various locations and simple, but fun puzzles, and going deeper and deeper makes you feel like you're in a real, authentic old cave.

The characters you meet remind me of puppets. I think that was the goal, and it works brilliantly. Sometimes it feels like you're participating in a puppet theater, a very witty and funny one. They look very cartoony and small, their animations are stiff and unnatural, like someone is really pulling the strings. Even their jaws move only up and down (mostly, I think).

As for the Cave, it just talks trash, tries to amuse you or make you laugh, but it tries too hard in my opinion, thus failing in doing so. But at least it isn't annoying and talks very rarely. Overall, it's good that it talks, it gives the game more charm, even if what it says isn't really funny.

The puzzle and adventure parts are brilliant too. The fact that you can pick up and use items adds so much more possibilities, and combined with your three folks working together, the puzzles are very interesting and fun to solve, and often not that obvious.

After reading a few reviews and seeing rather mediocre scores, I wasn't expecting this game to be good at all, decent at best. But the hell, is it GOOD. It's brilliant. I give it only 8/10, because of it's size, but if it would be a full, 49$ product, I would give it a 10/10, just like Psychonauts.… Expand

Nice puzzles, loving animations, cute characters with cool voices and a great humor in a big and mysterious cave.

Even 4 months after release this game is still frustratingly buggy. So far I've been completely stuck twice because important items were stuck on the ground due to overlapping background items. I've also had a handful of times where the a character gets stuck in level geometry and can't move or do anything except suicide.

Assuming you can get past the bugs, the game still sucks. 90% of your time will be spent running the characters back and forth between unnecessarily distant puzzles and items, with horribly clunky platforming controls. It's BORING! And you have to play through it 3 times to see all the puzzles.… Expand

Great game, killer art, good sense humor (a little naive, sometimes), simple mechanics. It's definitely not your typical soldier game, that's for sure. It may get a little repetitive after a few play-throughs, but it has a little something pushing you to complete all character's stories. Puzzles are not hard at all once you figure the basic rules, don't expect a Maniac Mansion-like challenge. In fact, comparing this to Monkey Island or Maniac Mansion makes no sense, this is much more linear and action-based. More importantly, while it doesn't invent anything, this is kind of an unique game with its own unique style, something that you'll only get from a craftsman like Mr. Gilbert.… Expand

The game has nice ambiance, graphic design and humor. Sadly it involves a lot of needless repetition and the puzzle elements are not very difficult. Personally I wouldn't buy this game again after playing through it once. Doubt I'll bother grinding through the the other story lines. In summary: Pretty looking game but short and repetitive as hell.

The Cave do have its charm. The visuals are for the most part quite nice and there are some lovely colorful levels in the game. The characters are quite nice and their stories are interesting enough and the narrator is a nice touch that could have been used a bit more in my opinion. Now the gameplay is a mix between platforming and puzzles with emphasis on the puzzles. The platforming works fine though the control can be a little bit wonky. The platforming is however never really challenging and is mostly there to spread out the puzzles. The puzzles in the game are quite similar to the puzzles in old adventure games. So you are basically combining objects with each other and all that other stuff associated with point and click adventure games.

The puzzles in the game are for the most part quite reasonably challenging even though there are some far fetched puzzles here and there. Some puzzles did contain a little bit to much running back and forth which got a little bit annoying though. I also found myself stuck in the game at one point since i didn't know that each character had a special ability. But hey the game might have told me about it and i somehow managed to miss it.

Now the biggest flaw of this game in my opinion is the way the game handled the different characters and their individual levels and stories. Each character has their own individual level that is based upon their story. And these levels were my favorite levels in the game. These levels were also the only levels which really made you use the characters special ability which was a nice change of pace from simply jumping around in the character neutral levels.

So after finishing the game for the first time (took me around 5-6 hours) i wanted to play the remaining four character levels. But to do that i would be forced to replay every damn character neutral level to get to the levels that i wanted to play. To experience all the seven different character level you would have to replay the campaign 3 times. And the emphasis on puzzles in this game makes replaying the character neutral levels and solving puzzles you already know the solutions for a real chore.

I cant understand why the would design the game in such a way and it only serves to hid away a substantial part of the games contents behind filler nonsense. And since i am complaining i should mention that the way the handled multiple ending felt a bit forced.

In the end i thought that this game was quite average. I am not the biggest fan of these kind of adventure games (even though i can appreciate their charm) so its possible that someone more fond of the genre would appreciate it more and be more forgiving to its short comings. I did however have some fun with it and the game is by no means a bad way to spend a small amount of cash for if you got your eye out for it.it.… Expand

This game is not bad but could be easier puzzles. The management is not that bad, but sometimes breaks off a bit of the game. Playing the game is boring, just feel like playing with it. Just feel like it sometimes is.

The Cave is made with love and is one hot candidate for the best Jump'n'Run of this year. The funny story of „The Cave“ is nicely packaged and the tough brain twisters will make you desperate. For just a small price „The Cave“ really is a Must Have!

A charming game with great humor but the back and fourths become a bore and ultimately bring enjoyment to a grinding halt.

The large cast of characters encourages you to invest more and more time into completing the game more then once.However the gameplay itself seems to scare you out of wanting too. Dont get me wrong the first play through is ok. The puzzles and script are awesome.

However too many puzzles require you to go to A then to B then to A then B then A....you get the point.… Expand

On a basis of value you really can't ask for more out of this game. Yes, it's less than what we expect from Ron Gilbert. And yes, it's not on the level of Monkey Island. But given the ambitious concept and overall great execution for a small budget game, you can't ask for more. Especially at $15.

It's a wonderful game. I think of it as a mix of an adventure game with "The Lost Vikings" gameplay (or maybe Trine, if you're younger). The possibility of selecting 3 from 7 characters with distinct abilities is the main positive thing about the game, because it gives you a lot of possibilities. I just think the "Cave" humour could be a little less forced.