Developer/Publisher: Double Fine Productions/Sega Released: January 2013

Played on: PS3 (also available on PC, Mac, Wii U, 360, Linux, iOS, Android, Ouya)

My interest in this game came from Ron Gilbert’s involvement – I’m willing to give anything he makes a chance after my countless visits to Monkey Island. I tried The Cave demo out on Wii U and it seemed interesting, reminiscent of The Lost Vikings which I loved, and soon enough the game came free with PS+.

Its a curious puzzle platformer featuring a talking cave with a sharp sense of humour. There are 7 characters to choose from, each with their own guilty back-story, and in the cave they find either redemption or doom. The cave itself is the only voice we hear, but the 7 characters have stories that play out through paintings and cave-generated recreations of their past misdoings.

You control 3 characters at a time, solving puzzles together, and certain characters allow you access to different parts of the cave. This is one of the game’s annoyances – there are 7 characters. So you have to play the entire game through 3 times, replaying 2 characters’ journeys twice, in order to experience all the story and puzzles the game has to offer. I played through twice, and the notion of playing through again, particularly the common puzzles which are in every playthrough, was not appealing in the least. So I never played as the Hillbilly. Part of me is sad about that, as each character’s story was amusing and memorable and the puzzles often quite fun.

Verdict: This is a fun puzzle platformer that is not too much of a challenge, but has enough charm in its design and characters to put it above lesser games. Overall the writing was good, but sometimes missed the mark. I was mostly pulling a wry smile rather than laughing out loud, but that does suit the game’s sinister sense of humour.

Should Bradley play this: Probably not – he’d rather play WOW.