Cave Story is a 2004 game that looks as if it was made in 1988. A small robot with no memory wakes in a cave, finds a village of rabbit-like creatures called Mimigas under threat from a scientist and his henchmen, and fights through a maze of caverns with a growing collection of guns. It is a Japanese freeware game, Doukutsu Monogatari, and one person made all of it: Daisuke Amaya, who works as Pixel. Edge picked it out as a free download in March 2005, praising a “level of polish and depth that could easily elevate it from freeware”.
One person, five years
Amaya made the game in his spare time over about five years. Wireframe pictured him “huddled up in front of his computer for about five years”, emerging with a game that was “an homage to Metroid – before such a thing was commonplace”. Edge described the result as “designed and developed solely” by Amaya, and he gave it away.
It was small. The German magazine Lotek64 noted in 2005 that the whole game, with its manual in HTML, came to 865 KB compressed and ran on Windows 98 or later with DirectX 5. It was in Japanese, but the fan group Aeon Genesis translated it into English, which Edge said made it “an essential download”.
Playing it
The hero, Quote, explores a network of linked underground areas. Edge described it in 2010 as “Metroid or Castlevania filtered through Spelunker”: capsules extend his health bar in the manner of Metroid’s energy tanks, and his weapons grow stronger with use, as in Castlevania.
The weapons are the clever part. Defeated enemies drop energy crystals that level up the gun in Quote’s hand, and every hit he takes drains experience back out of it, so a powerful weapon can drop a level in the middle of a fight. Edge called the result “a juggling routine, balancing the usefulness of charged weapons against the desire to strengthen others”. Characters offer to swap or upgrade some weapons along the way, and holding on to a weaker one sometimes leads to something better later. The bosses, Edge thought, were “resolutely old-school”: learn the pattern, dodge, and hit the weak spot.
The game has several endings, and seeing the best one means meeting what Edge called “a horrendously nasty sting in the tail”. Its characters are part of its appeal, among them Curly Brace, a second robot, and Balrog, a boss shaped like a toaster who keeps coming back to fight Quote.
From freeware to Nicalis
Cave Story spread among players of independent games. Retro Gamer noted in 2006 that “thanks to the phenomenal Cave Story”, the Metroid-style exploration game was “de rigueur within the indie scene”.
The American publisher Nicalis, whose co-founder Tyrone Rodriguez made a business of bringing PC freeware to WiiWare “in association with the original developers”, released a new version for the Wii in 2010, credited to Nicalis and Studio Pixel. It cost 1,200 Wii points. Edge gave it 8 out of 10, liked the smoothed sprites and remastered music, the option to play with the original graphics, the new difficulty modes and the chance to play as Curly, and summed it up as “the great NES game lost for 20 years down the back of the sofa”. A DSiWare version followed later in 2010. Cave Story+ reached Steam on 22 November 2011 and the Nintendo Switch on 20 June 2017; Cave Story 3D, a remake with three-dimensional graphics made by Nicalis and published by NIS America, came out for the 3DS in November 2011.
Amaya went on making games on his own. At BitSummit in Kyoto in 2013, where Edge noted that Cave Story had been ported to “various PC, console and handheld platforms”, he announced a new game for iOS, explaining that Android’s variety of hardware made it impossible for one person to test.
Sources
- Edge issue 147, March 2005, p. 20: Doukutsu Monogatari (Cave Story) as a free download (Mimigas, the doctor, weapons levelled by energy, multiple endings, the Aeon Genesis translation).
- Lotek64 issue 15, October 2005, p. 16: review (865 KB, Windows 98 and DirectX 5, the English version, the amnesiac hero).
- Retro Gamer issue 29, 2006, p. 85: “thanks to the phenomenal Cave Story”.
- Edge issue 208, December 2009, p. 68: Nicalis and Tyrone Rodriguez.
- Edge issue 215, June 2010, p. 98: review of the WiiWare version (2004 release; Quote, Curly Brace, Balrog; the crystals and weapon levels; the endings; 1,200 points; the new modes; 8/10).
- Edge issue 253, May 2013, p. 14: BitSummit, Amaya on iOS and Android.
- Wireframe issue 68, November 2022, p. 32: “Pixel Art in 20 Games” (about five years; the Metroid homage).
- Steam store page, Cave Story+ (web, secondary): release on 22 November 2011, Nicalis and Studio Pixel. https://store.steampowered.com/app/200900/Cave_Story/
- Nintendo of America store page, Cave Story+ for Nintendo Switch (web, secondary): release on 20 June 2017. https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/cave-story-plus-switch/
- Nintendo Life, Cave Story 3D (web, secondary): Nicalis, NIS America, released 8 November 2011 in North America and 11 November 2011 in Europe. https://www.nintendolife.com/games/3ds/cave_story_3d
- “Cave Story”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the freeware release date, five years of spare-time work, the DSiWare release. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Story