The Dark Cave Review

The Dark Cave is a “gritty pixel art turn-based roguelike” developed by Leaves Games and published by 2P Games. In this game, you’ll be diving down into a dark cave, battling monsters and collecting loot in a strategic manner. Now, I love my roguelikes, so this caught my eye when I saw it was available. Plus, after experiencing something simple yet dark like Bleak Sword DX, I was going into it with some excitement. So, let’s check it out.

First off, let’s talk about the art style… which was somewhat of a letdown to me. I expected a little more of that dark and gritty aesthetic that the logo and the banner on the store page had, but it looks more like the pixel art I’ve seen for some phone games. It’s not bad and enemy designs can be quite good, but I was expecting something a little more serious-looking. This is more like a retro Final Fantasy-style RPG more than anything else.

However, there is more to a game than graphics, so let’s get into the main part. Before you start a run, you’ll need to select a character, of which there are only three: The Knight, the Elf (who looks like a fairy), and the Undead. Each one has their own unique skills, relics, and playstyle so you have to adapt and play to their strengths, or else you’ll find yourself ending a run early. You can only unlock each character by completing a run with the previous one, which kind of puts a damper on things, given how few characters there are. Still, each character is fun to play and really tests your ability to strategise and roll with whatever the game throws at you.

But enough about that, let’s get into a run. Once you’ve confirmed your character, you'll be thrown into the dark caves. Your only goal is to beat all the chapters, powering up your character’s skills and obtaining run-modifying relics to help you survive the monsters that you will encounter. Fights are played out in two separate 3x3 grids, with the right containing your chosen hero and the left having all the enemies. You use skills to attack, buff, and debuff, with aiming dictated by the space you’re on. You can move around, but be warned. You only have a certain amount of moves, and running out will make you lose HP for every step you take. It’s very tactical, and the skills, potions, and relics you bring into a fight can make a serious difference. With the right set-ups, you can make a run a breeze, which is a very nice feeling.

That being said, The Dark Cave is… sort of easy. The game allowed me to retry the battle as many times as I wanted to, with no drawback as far as I could tell. Although you do unlock more difficulties, I expected something a little brutal, but that is strangely very kind for this type of game. I have gotten into unwinnable situations though, no matter how many retries I got, so sometimes it is better to restart than continue a futile run. I guess it is fine, but it does feel like a crutch.

You do get permanent upgrades, making this a roguelite, using talent points earned with every chapter beaten. The skills you unlock are minor but can seriously help you beat a run. However, I ran into a few issues with it. For one, it’s one click and it’s done. No take-backs, even on misclicks. The second is that there is a lack of lines connecting skills from one to another, making it a little frustrating at first to figure out how to unlock the later skills. It says you need at least one point in a previous skill to unlock the next tier, but in reality, you need at least one point in every skill to do that. It wasn’t as clear as it should be. Minor, but still somewhat of an issue.

And that’s everything I wanted to cover about the game itself, but how does it hold up in terms of performance and any technical problems? Well, since this is a fairly simple pixel art game, I was hitting up to 2800 FPS, at least at the time I checked the FPS counter. I did encounter one issue where I hit a button on my keyboard accidentally, and suddenly, I couldn’t click on anything, so I was stuck and had to restart the game. I also found that there are some translation issues as some of the text wasn’t fully translated from the original Chinese. It does a good job overall, but I have no idea what the heck that button at the bottom right of the main menu actually does. Also, I totally forgot to point out earlier, that you have to play the game with only your mouse, using on-screen arrow keys to move. I couldn’t find any other controls.

So, what are my overall thoughts on The Dark Cave? It is fairly okay. Not exactly groundbreaking, and I’m pretty sure this was a phone game before it came to Steam, but you can have some fun with it. Runs are short, there’s enough variety and unlocks to encourage coming back, and it’s cheap too. It’s not a bad game by any means, but it doesn’t do enough to allow it to stay in your memory.