one of my favourite aspects of the N64/PS1 era was just how hangout-able so many of its platformers were. i just want to inhabit a world like Peach's castle, the hubs of Spyro 2, and most of Banjo-Kazooie. that shit all had such delicious atmosphere, music, neat lil secrets, and great movesets to explore with. Cavern of Dreams fully embodies all of those great elements of its forefathers but fully cranks up the mysterious, slightly-spooky feelings playing games could give off up late at night on a CRT.
Cavern of Dream's tone and visuals are simply too good, its colour palette makes me want to cry. it's pulling from lots of N64-era games (particularly Rare's) but its main inspiration seems to be "the astral observatory in Majora's Mask", which might just be the single most beautiful location ever put in any game so i heavily fuck with the dev's vision. nearly every new location made me go "woah!!! pretty!!!" out-loud and take a couple screenshots. that made me like the game by default, but i was overjoyed to find out just how smooth of an experience 100%'ing Cavern of Dreams was. its areas are really compact, full of sharply-designed puzzles and challenges that never go too far in frustrating the player or boring them.
Cavern of Dreams isn't very long, getting 100% took me around 6 hours and very little of that time was spent aimless or upset. aside from maybe two stand-out sections that annoyed me (the final boss, the whirlpools in an end section that send you back a minute of walking) and a few qualms with the player's movement (it's really easy to bounce off a wall when trying to ground-pound) this was an absolute joy. i want to put this game in my mouth.
Cavern of Dream's tone and visuals are simply too good, its colour palette makes me want to cry. it's pulling from lots of N64-era games (particularly Rare's) but its main inspiration seems to be "the astral observatory in Majora's Mask", which might just be the single most beautiful location ever put in any game so i heavily fuck with the dev's vision. nearly every new location made me go "woah!!! pretty!!!" out-loud and take a couple screenshots. that made me like the game by default, but i was overjoyed to find out just how smooth of an experience 100%'ing Cavern of Dreams was. its areas are really compact, full of sharply-designed puzzles and challenges that never go too far in frustrating the player or boring them.
Cavern of Dreams isn't very long, getting 100% took me around 6 hours and very little of that time was spent aimless or upset. aside from maybe two stand-out sections that annoyed me (the final boss, the whirlpools in an end section that send you back a minute of walking) and a few qualms with the player's movement (it's really easy to bounce off a wall when trying to ground-pound) this was an absolute joy. i want to put this game in my mouth.