Double Fine Production’s latest puzzle game

The Cave is a platformer/puzzle game where players have to explore a cave to reveal secrets about each character.

The Cave is a mysterious game. Players are greeted with a humorous cave who is the narrator of the story. There are seven characters to choose from but you can only use three characters at a time. You can toggle between your three different characters to solve puzzles. Switching characters works smoothly and intuitively.

In each level of The Cave, there are glowing glyphs on the walls that reveal pieces of each character’s back story. While the art provided by the glyphs is beautiful, the back stories provided for each character left me wanting. It each level only reveals a panel of a character’s story so you won’t get a complete picture until you’re done with the game. The Cave makes for some very slow story telling.

While the story left me wanting, graphics and puzzles in The Cave were impressive. Double Fine did a great job of creating a detailed and beautiful cave setting. The are some levels in The Cave that take you out of the cave setting to keep the levels looking and feeling fresh.

Sound design for the game is excellent. The low hum of air escaping the cave and other noises in The Cave sound great and create a great sense of space. Unfortunately there is no soundtrack to speak of. Get used to listening to ambient cave noises or you may be driven mad.

The biggest problem that The Cave suffers from is a split-second lag with its controls. Players will have to anticipate the lag and jump a split second quicker than expected. There is an awful amount of backtracking in this game so having laggy controls really tests your patience.

While The Cave’s controls can be frustrating, its humor, beautiful graphics, and satisfying puzzles make it a worthwhile play.