Explore the cave and a couple’s relationship

Cave is a platform exploration game, like you may never have played before.

Starting in a darkened cave, you are shown a girl and a boy, with their controls. You control both of them, flicking between them with the Tab key when necessary. There’s no information about what’s going on at the start, but you are given some ideas as the game goes on.

The controls are simple, although not as responsive as the best platformers. Still, it’s not too hard to get around the cave. The girl and boy have different abilities, and have to be sent off in different directions to find switches in places only they can reach. The girl has a lighter and can crawl, but the boy has a higher jump.

The darkness closes in around you as you move around, and as the cave is pretty big, you soon get a sense of loneliness, and insecurity about managing to reunite the couple. Along the way the characters will have thoughts about the relationship, which make you ask questions about what is going on. Cave starts to get quite tense, and while it’s not too long, it’s really worthwhile playing through to find out what happens. As with many indie games recently, Cave tells a kind of story that you never see in mainstream commercial releases, and the form of the storytelling is also unusual.

Cave is a fascinating little platform game. While it has basic graphics and sound, it’s very atmospheric and though provoking.