Review – The Cave

I was looking for a filler game to keep me occupied until the Switch comes out on Friday so whilst I was scrolling through my download list, I came across The Cave, another smash hit from the creators Double Fine. Going in blind, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I didn’t know what type of game this was or anything to do with the story, the only thing I knew was that it was a free game as part of the Xbox Live Gold pass.

I was very excited when I found out that this was a puzzle game but even more exciting was the fact that it was a clever puzzle game. The aim is to choose 3 of the 7 characters available and go on a hunt to bring back 3 artifacts based on the characters you’ve chosen. Each character has a unique ability to help them on their unique stages that were design for themin mind. The cave itself contains 10 levels, 1 unique for each character and 3 generic for everyone to enjoy. The team will have to work together to help each other traverse the dangers that lurk within. For example, 1 character will have to hold a switch down to allow the other 2 to go through a door. The other 2 will then have to find a way to get the first guy through. It’s very well thought out and you can switch characters with the flick of a button on the d-pad. The character you get to chose from each have a little back story which is narrated through the voice of the Cave. With a few jokes thrown in, the guidance offered by the Cave is very welcoming and helps the game move along through its story.

The Knights story involves him trying to win the heart of a princess so her father allows him to try his hand at pulling Excalibur from the stone. The Adventurer explores a pyramid to collect an ancient artifact. The Monk seeks enlightenment and wishes to become the master of his field. The Twins wants to plays as every child does bit is held back by their parents, how can they solve that I wonder? The Hillbilly wishes to win a prize at the carnival to impress a lady friend. The Scientist wants to launch a nuclear missile on the world thus gaining lots of cash. The Time Traveller needs to work her way through time to gain fame. She was my favorite one actually as her level consists of 3 moments in time. Prehistoric, present and future. If you move a rock in the prehistoric time, it changes what happens in the present and future. If you kill a dinosaur, it ends up being oil in the present and so forth, you get the point.

I’ve just finished playing all 7 characters via 3 playthroughs but I can still see myself going back before Friday as there are still other achievements I wish to collect. The replay value is shockingly good as each playhrough will take around an hour and a half to complete so you won’t be losing too much time.

If you were one of the lucky ones to add this to your download list when it was free, it’s defo worth the time to play. Failing that, I’ve noticed there is an app on the Google Play store for £2.30. I’m not sure how this plays given I was using the Xbox One pad as opposed to a mobile screen. It was actually a 360 game but worked with the backwards compatibility feature on the Xbox. The graphics are easy on the eyes and the level designs are very well thought out and structured. The design will change slightly depending on the 3 character gets you choose so it works pretty well.

The Cave gets my seal of approval even if it’s just for a time filler, it’s worth the hours.

Ciao for now!

Review – Settlers of Catan (app)

For the many fans out there of the board game Settlers of Catan, the app that’s available on the Google Play and IOS store is a welcoming mobile version of the brilliant strategy game. Granted you have to pay a small figure but you get what you pay for and what you pay for is hours of challenging fun.  For the standard version you pay for, you’re able to go online and play the game with your friends or just with strangers to compete for the win. There is also an option to add various levels of AI characters just in case you can’t find enough people to play with. This is pretty much all I was expecting as I wanted to play with my friends when it wasn’t possible to visit each other. The feature itself worked very well with all aspects of the board game without the time consuming mess of having to setup or cleanup the pieces.

Once inside the game, you’ll soon find out that there are optional extra payments for the Catan expansions Seafarers and Cities & Knights. I haven’t yet played the Cities & Knights expansion as the former has proven to be so much fun that I didn’t feel the need to shake things up. Once these have been purchased, it also unlocks a very unique campaign mode which creates scenarios and different board setups for you to compete against the AI.

You can then use these different setups to play online or in single player for practice. There are a total of 25 maps to choose from which is more than enough to keep you busy for a fair few hours; I’ve been playing now for a total of around 250 hours without the C&K expansion. With each map, you further more have the ability to customise the game rules to switch things up even more.

Map – You can have the tiles placed in their standard fixed locations or variable which randomly places them in any given hex.

Robber – You can choose standard rules or friendly which means you can only place the robber on a tile not yet occupied by another player.

Dice – Standard dice or stack which means each number gets a fair share of the roll as each combination is rolled at least once at random.

Start Mode – Let’s you start with a settlement as usual or with a city.

Resource Bonus – Let’s a player pick a resource of their choice if they don’t receive one from a dice roll within 5 turns.

You can surely agree with me that this is more than enough to keep the replay value going for a hell of a long time!

The user interface of the game works really well and only took me around an hour to figure out how to work with it given there isn’t really any tutorial; this is definitely and app for those of you who knows how to play the board game. Despite the lack of guidance, I still managed to get online and play my brother for the first time with ease after a simple signup process. I’m pretty sure I beat him too….

If you can look past the various negative reviews of crashing and lag, you’ll have a great time with this app especially as it never gets boring. The game itself is always different which makes me wonder how many years it’s going to be keeping me occupied. I’ve never once experience any glitches so it must be a limited number of users. 

In my not so expert opinion, I give this game app a respectable 7 out of 8 eggs.

Ciao for now!