Cave Jumper

Written by Jake on February 3rd, 2007 and posted in Reviews
Tags : action, adventure, pc, platformer, retro

Cave Jumper is a *very* retro platform game for PCs published by Addictive247. I instantly liked this game within 10 seconds of playing it because it reminds me of an old-school C64/Spectrum/Amiga-type game. Mainly this is due to the large pixelated graphics, retro mod style music and just the general theme.

Basically you play a miner who has to go through various caves, avoiding hazards and picking up gold along the way. To complete each level you have to find a gold gem; simple - except that it gets pretty hard quite early on. You are armed with a pickaxe which can be thrown across or up (useful for dispatching bats). The axe can be swapped for more powerful versions later on (10 different ones according to the blurb). Plus you can pick up dynamite, which can be used to blow up monsters (try kicking it!), except that it’s more useful to blow up special blocks/walls to access secret areas.

Your character is pretty agile, he can jump, crawl and climb ropes and can even withstand lava for short periods of time, but if you fall too far he’ll be injured or killed. You have 3 hearts and when you loose them, you loose a life, and have to restart the level – this fits in with the retro feel but can also be very frustrating on some of the longer harder levels. I’ve yet to find a way to gain more hearts permanently (you can grab first aid kits mid level to replenish lost hearts) but then I’m only on level twenty-something out of 100. In fact, based on how long it’s taken me to get there (due to replaying certain levels several times), the game will take quite a while to complete and is therefore good value for money in that respect.

Along the way you’ll fight bats, spiders, green goo blobs, skeletons, yetis, a dragon and many more creatures (20+ says the blurb) and a boss every 5 levels. You’ve also got lifts and moving platforms, switches and doors and the graphics and music change every 5 levels too.

Despite having retro graphics and some slightly dodgy scrolling, it does have some neat touches such as parallax scrolling backgrounds, good animation, neat particles effects, flying/spinning coins, cool fire, and lighting effects. The character has a miner’s light, which is battery powered, and as the battery runs down the level becomes darker, until when the light totally runs out you can’t see the monsters! Luckily you can pick up new batteries and also there are burning torches that illuminate your way.

The first time cave jumper loaded I grabbed my retro-style digital joystick only to find out that the game is controlled by keyboard only, shame L However the keys are fine and come in handy for some of the pixel perfect jumps which you sometimes mess up due to the players slight momentum (especially on the ice levels). However, be sure to read the instructions before playing and then to read the handy signs which tell you what to do, like “Hold Ctrl to read signs” – classic, you’d never know that unless you tried! I feel that pop-up tutorial boxes would have worked better. In fact the game has a pretty non-standard user interface and no mouse pointer. It asks you if you want windowed mode (which just draws on the desktop, there is no minimise or close button) or full screen mode as it boots up and you can’t change this in-game because there is no options screen, not even for music/sound volume! There are 3 save slots, which allow you to continue from where you left off (thank god) but even that interface is slightly bugged. However, I’m just being nit picky about these issues because I develop games – really the important bit, the game play, is unaffected. Weirdly, despite having interface stuff missing, it has the ability to submit your scores to an online highs scores table.

This game is very addictive and fun and frustrating. One night I should have been making spaghetti bolognaise for my girlfriend and the game delayed me for a good couple of hours and thus I wasn’t flavour of the day, shall we say. I’ve also been playing it a lot with my boys who like it too (especially when the character falls and dies), and I aim to finish it if I can find the time.

If you like retro stuff then give this game a go, and hopefully you’ll groove to it enough to buy a copy, especially as it’s only $17.95. Let me know what you think of it!

• Cave Jumper Information

• Jake's Rating :

  Rating: 4
  Readers Rating : no rating yet
• Cave Jumper website
• Price : $17.95
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