Game: The Enchanted Cave
& The Enchanted Cave 2
Publisher: DustinAux
(Dustin Auxier)
Platform:
Kongregate.com (PC), Steam, and Mobile (Android/iOS)
Years and years ago,
I blogged about the Enchanted Cave, a simple little roguelike RPG
where you’re a tiny man in a tiny dungeon fighting tiny monsters
and gathering treasures. I still play the game. I still love the
game.
I bought the game.
“Wait, FC!” you
may be thinking, “but doesn’t that kind of violate your own
guidelines for game reviews? You do free games, not pay-to-play or
buy-with-real-money games!”
That’s true, and I
usually do just play the free version, but I really dig this guy’s
work, and the money goes on to support him developing more great
games. Besides, the Android version is super smooth and takes care of
a few major inconveniences in the original game – namely the fact
that you can now STEP OVER EMPTY MONEY BAGS in the dungeon.
Seriously. You could get blocked by the RNG (Random Number
Generation) dumping an impassible money bag between you and the exit,
forcing you to leave the cave early in the online version.
Also, because this
guy made a sequel.
And the sequel
freaking ROCKS!
Everything that
bothered me in the original Enchanted Cave? Fixed. Seriously, if you
liked the Enchanted Cave, you’ll probably like Enchanted Cave 2.
In the first
Enchanted Cave, the story is more nebulous. Why are you in the cave?
Why are you obsessively delving deeper and deeper into it? What kind
of world is it where there’s a cave full of fiery skeletons who
want you dead? What’s going on? No clue. Doesn’t matter. Go down,
kill things, get stuff, gather stat-boosts, earn money, leave,
repeat. Forever (if you want).
Enchanted Cave 2
gives you an actual story that you can actually understand: There’s
a town with a magical cavern that’s full of monsters and treasure.
Not everyone who enters exits again. You wander into town and there’s
a bunch of people hanging out, ready to go in for another run. Their
wives and families aren’t thrilled, since the death toll is
apparently pretty high. You go for a run, collect stat gems and
money, kill monsters, etc, etc, and… wait… did you just LEVEL
UP?!
Oh yes. You can
actually level up now in addition to gaining stat gems that
permanently boost your HP, Attack, Defense, Magic, or Agility
(sometimes they give you a choice). Leveling up gives you skill
points that you can spend on more stat boosts (including getting you
more money per kill) or new spells. You no longer have to pray to the
RNG gods that you’ll get the Heal spell before you reach endgame –
you can spend your skill points along the awesome looking skill web
to get the Heal spell (or any other spell).
Besides the new
leveling mechanic, there are a few other new parts to the game. You
can now flee battles (it’s not really worth it after a while, just
choose your battles carefully and you won’t have to waste an attack
and possibly get killed trying to escape), find secret rooms by
bumping into subtly glittering walls, use consumable pickaxes to take
out walls in the cave for better access, and yes, you can now craft
potions. Crafted potions are made from bits you collect from monsters
you kill or from these little brown chests that are specifically for
consumables. These potions can boost anything from experience gain to
gold chance to bleed damage to health regeneration. Seriously, they
can do a lot of stuff, and different bits may have multiple possible
results you can choose to use.
The Escape Wings
magic item makes its return in this sequel, and it still does the
same thing: it provides you an escape, but you cannot take most of
your items (including potions) with you. Only stat booster gems and
items from Gold Chests come with you (until you get a spell that
enchants items to bring with you). They’re also the only exit from
the cave besides death (which takes everything away from you). Once
you exit the cave and look around, though, you begin to realize that
there are less people in the town.
More people vanish
every time you delve.
It’s actually
pretty creepy.
It’s even creepier
when you find the hidden rooms in the cave and find the journal
entries that tell you, slowly, how this whole cave came to be.
Spoilers: It ain’t a happy story!
The pixel art is far
more detailed this time around, which makes some of the boss fights a
bit… unnerving. Especially if you have some very specific phobias.
Add to this the music and you’ve got a great recipe for a fantastic
playing experience.
By the way, the
other reason I was stoked to give money to this guy is that he hired
someone very, very special to do the music for Enchanted Cave 2:
Grant Kirkhope.
Does that name
strike a chord with you? If you played any Rare games growing up, it
probably should. He did the music for GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie,
Perfect Dark, and Donkey Kong 64.
He didn’t mean for
the rap to show up guys. He did it as a joke. Seriously. Lay off.
His score for
Enchanted Cave 2 came with a certain level of support on Kickstarter
for Enchanted Cave 2, and knowing who he was, I had to – absolutely
had to – throw my wallet at this little game that could.
The original version
of the game came out in 2014, but don’t believe for a second that
it’s done being looked after by the creator. Despite working on
another game (which he says will be more exploration-based),
DustinAux has also recently put up a new update on Enchanted Cave 2.
I haven’t gotten to that part yet (I’ve been playing back through
Enchanted Cave 1 after switching Android devices and losing my
progress), but I can’t wait to see what’s new.
All in all, I’d
score the original a 9/10 (there are some bugs and sometimes the
monster placements still bother me – that one room where you
literally cannot kill everything comes to mind…), and the sequel a
10/10.
You can absolutely
(and should absolutely) play these games for free on Kongregate, but
if you want access to everything in both games (like the ability to
walk over money bags in EC1), throw a few bucks at a young developer
who can do so much on his own and get the Steam or mobile versions!
It’s well worth it just to be able to lug the soundtracks with you!
That’s all for me
for today, folks.
Go Enjoy Something!
FC
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