12 years ago I experienced what I’d consider one of the highest points of gaming for me. I opened my Christmas present under the tree and it was Cave Story 3D. My auntie has been more like an older sister to me. The gifts she’s given to me felt like some of the most major events in my life. That may seem like a stretch, but one of the many gifts before and after this was the gameboy advance SP, which was the first system I, myself, owned that was truly mine and mine alone. It’s been so long that I don’t even know if I asked for it, I have no idea how she knew but she knew to find the game I never knew would be one of the greatest immersive experiences for me. The disconnect between generations is a huge gap within a lot of variables so it’s hard to truly understand what the other is feeling. I never really felt this with her because no matter what, she understood. Gaming and music has been a huge part of my identity. This is a gaming site, so obviously I’m not here to talk about music. Playing Donkey Kong jr on a strange controller that was essentially a compact emulator with 200+ games is the second most vivid memory I have as a child, so nobody can tell me different on what the first game I truly played was. I was young, but I remember it like it was yesterday. My first playthrough of cave story will never be erased from my mind. I was so engrossed with it I felt true passion for the first time. I’m not into too many things, the typical “nerd” shit that people used to consider a couple years ago. Gaming, anime, manga, comics, reading, listening to any and every genre, etc. Thats who I am, and that’s who I’ll always be. Cave story hit a deep spot for me. The music, the aesthetic, the story, the characters, the art style, the gameplay.. everything was what I ever could’ve asked for and then some. Undeniably it’s one of, if not the biggest, milestones for indie games. It set a precedent for everything that followed it. A solo dev that did pretty much everything on its own. Nowadays Toby fox, the creator of undertale, is what the general public of gaming know that as.. but no pixel did it first and he will always be a legend to me and many others that cave story has reached. I’m not here to talk about the game or the story or the characters. I usually do that but I have no intentions or desires to. If you read up until this point I want you to experience it for yourself. It may not hit you nearly as hard as it hit me but I hope you at least enjoy it. To me it’s fun, immersive, and completely sets itself apart from any other game. Not because it really did anything creatively first in a breakthrough type of way.. but because it clearly has its own identity. It’s something to me, that you’ll never forget, and it sets itself apart from any other game ever made. Something that is meant to be played blind multiple times. You will discover things you never seen before if you do things differently, and if you play the newest version of it? You’ll be greeted with so many bells and whistles compared to the original freeware release. I can go on and on and on about the history of this game, but maybe you already know that. What you don’t know is that me and a bunch of other people have felt what I’d like to think is the vision pixel wanted players to see. I hope you give this game a chance and have fun with it, I’ll keep playing forever until I’m 6 feet under, and I hope I can get more to enjoy it even a fraction as much as I have.

cave story is one of my biggest inspirations, and i think the progenitor of my love for idiosyncratic, diamond-in-the-rough passion projects. i'd be a different person without cave story. textual themes and motifs aside, to me this game is ultimately about how cool it is to make art. mash all your favourite genres and tropes together and watch the magic that comes out! i love that more than anything. if i turn my game design brain on, i'd have issues, but who cares about game design when this world is so fucking cool?

...nicalis please fix the challenges on the steam version it's been 13 years

... man i wish i liked this more.

i'm generally a fan of metroidvanias, and i don't mind difficult games, so this seemed like a great choice to pick up. plus, i got a recommendation from someone to play (to my knowledge they only use rateyourmusic, they're @miokinon on there), so my expectations were pretty high going into this one. unfortunately, there are some pretty major problems that stop me from enjoying this more.

the controls feel rather loose, and for a game involving a good amount of platforming, that's not a great quality to have. the lack of checkpoints for major sections was also not great; i'm cool with endurance challenges, but those endurance challenges should be roughly equal in difficulty. i just found that many of the low-checkpoint sections were just frustrating, as it meant playing through another 5 minutes of easy gameplay that i just did.

it feels pretty dated in some ways as well - the checkpoint system fully resetting any progress, the lack of an in-game settings menu, the poor menu UI, it's all there.

i generally enjoyed the story, i think much of it is told in an interesting manner and characters were pretty endearing. there were points, especially in the latter half, where the plot was kind of just... dumped onto the player in an odd way. just a small gripe though, the story as a whole is pretty solid. i love balrog, he's just a homie

the bosses are pretty solid throughout, i enjoyed almost all of them thoroughly. the final fight is especially quite good and is a great climax.

it's not a game i consider great, but i'd recommend it if it seems like your thing. i think it's just not exactly for me, and i can totally see why people adore it, so give it a shot if it seems fun to you. i just didn't love it personally. :)

I don't know why it took me so long to play this. I absolutely loved it.
A great sidescroller with a bit of exploration and lots of choices.
Movement and combat is very well responsive and enjoyable.
I will come back to this one to finish it 100%.
Incredible and short game that I wholeheartedly recommend playing.

Cave Story is a dearly beloved game of mine, I never truly beat despite my love. I simply sucked too much at video games to ever actually get the best ending as a teenager, but after starting it up to see the Halloween sprites this year and realizing how much was resprited I accidentally started a new playthrough that ended up being one where I actually beat the full game.
One of my favorite games, and definitely one of the best indies out there, the fact that the original game in 2004 was the spawn of just one man in his free time is a true testament to what indies are.
If you wanna play it, play the freeware version or buy it used, also please buy Kero Blaster!!

Got filtered in the final stretch of the true ending, coupled with the fact that I got in with only 30 hp (fuck the falling rocks).
But going through that whole dungeon, with its bullshit second room, fighting a boss in the long-ass third room that can actually kill you if you keep standing below him after killing him, only to reach another long-ass boss fight with no health refills and no save points, is just unfair.
The game is great, and I actually finished the normal ending, and I was happy to play it for a second time, but that final dungeon is just so unfair on so many levels.
Maybe I'll finish the true ending someday, but in the meantime, I'm satisfied with what I played.

Cave Story is as good, if not better than the hype suggests. It's more 2D shooter than metroidvania, and its nice to play a game like this that you can't really get lost in. It's fairly straightforward and pretty challenging, but rewarding. For the most part...

For an indie game from 2004 harkening back to the 80s, this game has some pretty solid characters and world building. At least, all the normal plot stuff. The "post-game" lore feels pretty out of nowhere.

The remastered pixel art looks great on Switch, although I kind of prefer both the original and even that 3DS remake I couldn't beat when I was 12. The multiple soundtracks are all top tier, with my favorite being the "Remastered" option.

I do want to rant about the optional final dungeon though. I suppose its there so you have to earn the true ending, but the flags are pretty obscure without a guide, and frankly its just ridiculous. I spent 4 hours over two days before I got it, and 80% of attempts ended in the first 5 seconds or last minute. Bullet hell kaizo platforming works in 20-30 second burst, not a 7-8 minute segment. The reward for winning is cute, but nowhere near worth the effort I put into it. If you want to play the true ending, do yourself a favor and play on easy on a second playthrough. I would have loved to turn the difficulty down for it, but you can't.

If Cave Story was on the SNES, it would easily crack the top 10 games on the system. Just let that sink in. I know I just ranted about how I spent 4 hours working to get a 30 second cutscene, but that doesn't discount the rest of the game being an all time classic.

Edit: I thought I was playing on hard. It was just normal. Hard mode doesn't let you get health packs. There is no way in hell I am touching that. Also makes my 4 hours of attempts sting a little bit more.

Cave Story is arguably one of the most important indie titles to exist. I first played the game a long time ago, on my 3DS, but I don’t remember too much about my time with the game. It’s just been that long. But I was thinking about the game again recently, so I decided “why not?”, and I started up Cave Story again. I was able to play through the entire game in a single sitting, getting the best ending possible as well. And through that, I really enjoyed playing the game again, and I feel like I fell in love with the game again.
Now before I get into the review proper, I want to add a little fun tidbit before anything else. The timing of when I played Cave Story is rather interesting. With the version of Cave Story I played, I didn’t realize there were seasonal events that could occur. In particular, since I was playing the game close to Halloween, the characters, enemies, and parts of the environment were dressed up in Halloween costumes. I found it really charming, and I thought it’d be fun to mention.
Now getting into the game proper, I really love exploring the world of Cave Story. Particularly, the level design of Cave Story is really good. It’s so good, that even after all these years, I remembered each of the locations you have to go to, and the structure of each level. The platforming also feels great. Even though the character you play as is a robot, Quote is very light, which feels really great when platforming. Quote’s movement gets even better when you get the booster. Since Quote’s movement never changes throughout the game until the Booster, it’s a breath of fresh air actually getting it. Also, it really feels like the Booster is the only thing that Quote needed to make his movement perfect, and I really like that.
Quote’s weapons are probably the best part of the game, and there’s a lot of really fun things seen through them. First off, each weapon has an experience bar tied to them, and you gain experience occasionally when beating enemies. The higher level the weapons get, the stronger they get, but if you take damage, the weapons lose experience. It creates a really good balance so that weapons don’t get too powerful, and to try and incentivize the player to switch between weapons. Though then again, I do feel like there is one objectively best weapon. To the weapons themselves, the actual weapons you get are really good. The Polar Star is your basic gun, then you go another staple, a Missile Launcher, a strong gun with limited ammo. Then there’s some really fun weapons as well. One of my favorite weapons in the game is the bubble, and while it seems bad at first, but gets really good as it goes to Level 2 and 3. The sword is also a really fun weapon, though I could rarely keep level 3 on it. I also find it really cool that some weapons you can can only be obtained by trading them for weapons you already have. It creates choices that the player has to make, thus making their run of the game unique. Though then again, there is arguably a best weapon, and I don’t know why someone wouldn’t go for it.
Now, when it comes to the story and characters of the game, I really love them. There’s a unique charm that’s found with the characters, and even though you’re with the characters for a very little time, they’re all really memorable. Misery and Balrog are some really fun characters especially. When it comes to the story of Cave Story, I didn’t realize how much worldbuilding there was in the game originally. There’s so much that the game just mentions offhand, but never makes a big deal of things. For example, it seems there was a war before, but we never really learn much about it.
The bosses of Cave Story are really fun as well. Aside from one boss, I was able to beat all of the bosses on the first try. But even then, I found a good number of them challenging, and because of that, really fun. There’s a sequence in the game where you have to fight 4 bosses back to back, and it was both tense and really fun. The final boss of the game is the only one that I died on, but it was easily the hardest boss in the entire game. Maybe it was because of the Halloween cosmetics, but the weak point of the second phase felt off.
One of the big things about Cave Story for me is the method in which you get to the true ending. In simplest terms, the way you get the true ending of the game is really complicated. You have to go through a lot of optional steps, alongside making sure you don’t mess up anywhere along the way. I don’t know entirely how I feel on this, on one hand, I really like that you have to put in the effort to get the best possible ending. On the other hand, I wish there was just a bit more direction in how you get to it. Once you get the path to the best possible ending, you’re brought to the hardest part of the game which then immediately leads into the final boss of the game. It’s a noticeable difficulty spike, and yet again I’m kind of conflicted on it. Particularly, part of me wishes there was a save point right before the final boss. Though then again, I really like how you have to go through hell to get the chance to fight the final boss.
I’m glad I finally got around to replaying Cave Story. It’s not that long of a game, which is why I was able to beat it in a single sitting. I loved exploring through the entirety of the game, and fighting the bosses is really fun. The music of the game is another stellar part of the game, and there’s some absolute earworms in it. Cave Story is still probably one of the most important indie titles to exist, and I’m glad I finally got to play the game again.