Cally's Caves 3 review

Cally's Caves 3 review

• I paid: £2.99 (Bundle price, normal price: 4.99)
• I expect: 12 hours of play
• I rate it 83/100
• Story-driven: no (but there is one)
• Demo available: yes
• Worth the price. Review below.

"Overall, I think the game will offer you a solid 10-15 hours of gameplay for a very reasonable price. I certainly enjoyed the experience more than I was expecting."

I picked up Cally’s Caves 3 as part of a bundle on BundleStars.com for £2.99, and I was surprised to find that it was quite competent. Casting my eyes down the list of games that I just purchased and downloaded always fills me with buyer’s remorse.  Games which are presented as ‘indie’ titles have been so over-done that they have moved completely out of vogue, and knowing that a game has been developed by an independent entity is no longer impressive.
That being said, I decided to try it out anyway. I will begin with the negative points.

The game looks nice, the sprites are very crisp and clean, but it lacks that last little bit of aesthetic polish. The ground and terrain is built up using tiles but as far as I can see, there is only one multi-tiled geographical feature and that is the soil corners. What this means is that the environment looks blocky and un-natural when it could be much richer; the best comparison that comes to mind is the mega drive Sonic games – they have floating islands that look none-square despite being made entirely of square tiles. The damage text is clearly just a basic font – arial? – and considering the frequency of its display, one imagines it would have been given a little extra attention. I like the fact that the game has a world map that allows you to freely teleport to checkpoints, but the actual map looks as though it was made in mspaint, which surely could have been improved with a small amount of work.

The music is very pleasant. If it was to my taste, I would download the sound track quite happily. Unfortunately though, the songs are not in sync with the game itself - instead, they play as though it was a playlist on repeat which I found a little jarring. The controls are generally quite sharp with the exception that rolling is needlessly clunky. For some reason, you have to come to a full stop before you can roll and there are two buttons depending on which way you are facing.
These complaints are either minor or aesthetic in nature and have almost no bearing on the gameplay. The game is extremely competent despite these flaws, but it breaks no new ground. Platform games that include shooting components are tried and tested, and this game brings nothing new to the table.

If I hadn’t recently decided that I was actually going to play through some of the drudgery on my Steam account I probably would not have even considering installing this game. What I found in place of a boring game that failed to hold my interest was instead a game that draws together the elements that it claims to work with and polishes them to a mirror-like sheen. Nearly everything about the game is tight and it just feels great to play. No falling to your death because your foot nudged the platform corner; no weird Mario-like momentum; no throwing your character into a wall of spikes for no reason; no trying to control a crosshair on screen while also jumping from platform to platform. Everything simply works.

Let not these complaints deter you, however. The positive aspects of this game far outweigh the negatives. The difficulty scaling is essentially perfect, for example: there is enough of a slow canter towards challenge that people unfamiliar with gaming can ease themselves into it but this is not so long as to bore those who are familiar with platforming. The deaths are frequent but fair. I did not feel as though the deaths were undeserved (with one exception) and they were infrequent enough to avoid being annoying. The exception to this is that early on in the game, you rapidly learn that water is actually made of a kind of magma, and stepping into it causes an instant death. There’s no reason that the game can’t just damage you and allow you to jump out, but this is ultimately a minor gripe.

The game has a sense of progression about it that places it somewhere between a Mario game and a Castlevania game in terms of RPG elements. There are enough McGuffins to collect for completionists to come back and take a second look – one of them unlocks a secret level – and the weapons all have growth and upgrades for those who get a kick out of those sorts of minor rewards. Indeed, just looking at how many weapons there were impressed me when I first opened a shop dialogue. To add to this, there are special blocks that require you to use a specific weapon to interact with them. It was truly a mercy to find out that these weapons were actually useful in their own right. Nothing kills my enthusiasm for a weapon system than a clumsily handled switch because you are forced to use something that sucks.

The levels are laid out in such a way that you will see secrets before you have the means to obtain them. This is pretty standard, but for an indie developer it is a sign that some extra thought has gone into the design of the game; something that too many indie titles are lacking. In addition, there are extra game modes for once you have finished the main game which is a nice reason to pick the game back up again.

Overall, I think the game will offer you a solid 10-15 hours of gameplay for a very reasonable price. I certainly enjoyed the experience more than I was expecting.