This is No Cave is a second Steam release by independent studio monome.studio. Their previous effort Kraken Smash: Volleyball was certainly different to this one but focuses on some of the same simplified principles. For this This is No Cave review I’ll detail my thoughts on the game and what it does well.
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This is No Cave Review for PC/Steam Deck
- Title: This is No Cave
- Developer: Monome Studio
- Publisher: Monome Studio
- Primary Genre: 2D Physics Platformer
Gameplay
The actual game sees the player put on an automatically moving path and you have to jump, swing, and wall-climb to avoid the dangers of the cave. It’s pretty simplistic and was designed to be played as just a single click title.
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The game does slowly add in some more mechanics like the swing being added and then the ability to dash within the swing etc. It isn’t the most ground-breaking setup ever, sharing a lot of features with an autorunner.
Where this title does seperate itself is the obvious intention for the player to speedrun the levels. It’s kind of like Sonic, on the surface Sonic is a pretty easy game, the joy is in finding out the right movements and tricks to get through the level faster.
Of course, Sonic has the added layer of the levels being built upwards and bridging paths existing, something that This Is No Cave doesn’t have.
Visuals
It’s a nice game visually. The promo shots and trailer show off a lot of the good design. The water trailing down the wall is probably my favourite visual of the entire game. It uses a very muted base to let the colours pop off as the caves are dark but everything you use to get around had colour, then when you’re into the light you can see the real beauty of the caves.
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This is No Cave Review – Last Word on Gaming Viewpoint
While I liked This is No Cave I couldn’t fight the feeling I was just playing a mobile game on a bigger screen. The single-click mentality is a bit too similar to the single-tap of most mobile games, particularly auto-runners. While I do think this is a higher quality than a mobile game it is a title that will make or break depending on your own desire to speedrun and perfect the levels.
