Review - CAVEBLAZERS - Spelunky with better combat?
Ripping shamelessly its entire content from its more successful peers, it tries to be different by adding some mildly advanced fighting mechanics.
Unfortunately, you're going to find out very early that it's extremely badly executed.
| Store | Platform | OVERALL RATING: 22% |
| Buy it on GOG | PC |
+ THE POSITIVE
- Easy arcade controls- Pleasant medieval music - The A.I. characters - No damn ghost like in Spelunky - You can be naked if you want
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THE NEGATIVE
- RNG will make you pull your hair out(if you're bald, just pull your pubic hair out) - Characters can overlap each other - Graphics look worse than E.T. on Atari 2600 |
WHAT IS CAVEBLAZERS?
"Caveblazers is an action-focused platformer-roguelike set in a fantasy world."
This "fantasy" world is in fact quite a dark and bland CAVE, inhabited by lots of unfriendly critters and gigantic bosses(each having their unique attack pattern) who have only one goal in life: killing you. But since you have a dying wish, you go anyway, baited like a dumb kid by the supposedly unimaginable riches hidden deep inside.
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| "Hey girl, did you grow up on a chicken farm? Because you sure know how to raise a cock!" *MORTAL KOMBAT BESTIALITY FINISH* |
One of the very few interesting features of Caveblazers is the AI CHARACTERS.
Some will attack you on sight, others will totally ignore you and go about their business, and others will actually help and follow you around!
Being a proper "roguelite", you get "permadeath"(permanent death), an inventory, and lots of items, equipments, and upgrades generated randomly in a completely unfair way! Yay!
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| Yay, I found a chest! Okay, I can't access it, but still, I'm so happy I found one!...... |
Oh yeah, and tons of different clothes, which are all made of 3 glorious pixels!
Good luck seeing the difference between a skirt and some pants in this game.
More than once, our character turned into a ladyboy.
We decided to make him(or her?) naked in the end, it was more convenient.
Do you guys feel this breeze in this cave, or is it just us?
Note!
We know what you're thinking. YES, we think that the game would have been 200% better if only it had permanent upgrades. It goes against the rules of roguelite(and even more rogueLIKE), but for such unfair games, it could have saved us lots of painful runs. |
| Caveblazers is so hardcore that even graphics have been procedurally generated. At least, we hope so. |
GAMEPLAY - HOW TO ENJOY DEATH FOR DUMMIES😂
The truth is, Caveblazers is closer to Dead Cells than it is to Spelunky, thanks to its combat system. Unfortunately, while controls are smooth and tight, it doesn't feel nearly as satisfying.
The main difference is that in Dead Cells, you can LEARN your enemies patterns, and then run through them like a breeze.
ABOUT THE 2 PLAYERS MODE
2 players mode is FUN!............NOT. If one of the players die, he has to wait an hour for the other player to finish.😦On the other hand, Caveblazers ALWAYS feels unfair, EVEN if you go very slow.
You obviously can't do anything against the extremely unbalanced RNG("random number generation". Look it up if you don't know about it, since it's one of the things which is ruining most roguelites), so, like the old guy tells you at the start of the game, you WILL die. More than usual.
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| Sever the spiders legs! |
- You WILL die against bosses, if they're resistant against the particular weapon you're using at the time. (And no, switching to ranged weapons won't help, especially when you consider how weak they are in general. Oh, and did we mention the oh-so-UNsatisfying 8-directional aiming system? Good lord...)
- You WILL die when you slip off an edge just to fall and delightfully impale yourself onto spikes which you didn't even have enough time to react to, because you COULDN'T EVEN SEE THEM UNTIL YOU HIT THE GROUND. (strangely, the game has no fall damage, though!?)
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| Ladies, please. Contain your orgasms. |
You have no idea where enemies could be, and must assume they're everywhere at all times.
After a while, you'll be able to unlock perks (which you get from the starting area), but they're not balanced very well, again.
Finally, all the items you can unlock bland and uninteresting and barely changes the gameplay, which is more based on your Asian skills AND sheer luck than XP and legendary items.
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| This sword's stats look good, eh? Too bad the game still feels the same as with my previous sword made of paper. |
A final complaint: characters can overlap each other.
This seems like nitpicking, but many times, when you'll be very close to an enemy and tries to slash him and adjust your position, you yourself will get slaughtered.
Overall, a frustrating experience which makes you feel like you wasted time.
GIT GOOD! SURVIVAL TIPS!
1. TRY to Learn enemy patterns! (even if it feels useless...)2. Drink unknown potions only when you have more than 50% of health.
3. Don't engage in combat if you're facing more than 3 enemies.
4. Remember that there is a health shrine on every other level (excluding boss levels).
5. Favor Melee combat, and try to use melee weapons that swing as fast as possible!
6. Don't forget that there's a parry mechanic! => If you attack at the same time as an enemy, you both get flung backwards (and sometimes you deal damage to the enemy).
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| Yeah, or as we say on the sea, it's not the size of the boat that counts, but the ability of your "seamen". |
NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO LOVE THIS GAME
What some fans call the "lack of hand-holding" is in fact amateurish flawed design, and no, having to go through 100,000 playthroughs doesn't mean the game is hardcore, and made for elitist hardcore gamers. Again, it just means it's badly designed. People always mention Dark Souls as the epitome of difficulty(which is not, though)... Well, even in Dark Souls, you can learn enemy patterns and get used to the difficult controls to a point that the game actually becomes EASY. It'll never be the case in Caveblazers. It's as hard to win in Caveblazers as in a game of "Russian Roulette". Are you guys suicidal?
GRAPHICS - WHEN PIXEL "ART" GOES WRONG😦
Games from 1985 look better than Caveblazers.
This is when blind nostalgia love for pixel art goes too far.
It feels like the developer didn't even try.
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| Oooh what beautiful colors. They just make me want to gouge my eyes out a bit. Oh and yes, this is the arena mode. And no, we won't even mention it. |
Level design is non-existent, color palette is atrocious, sprites are so tiny that you can't distinguish anything, and even animations are reduced to their bare minimum.
It doesn't get worse than this.
MUSIC - NICE MEDIEVAL TONES😊👍
The best part of the game, and one wonders how could such an ugly game have such beautiful melodies. SFX are okay and won't annoy your ears, but we would have appreciated more variations.
Anyway, judge the OST for yourself =>
The guitars reminds us a bit of "Blackmore's Night", Deep Purple's Ritchie Blackmore's band, and wouldn't have felt out of place in a medieval game or movie. =>
RATING BOX
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VERSION TESTED: 1.3.1
Publisher:
Developer:
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|---|---|
| GRAPHICS: 9% | |
| It's actually impossible to make the game more ugly. | |
| MUSIC: 82% | |
| Sounding like beautiful medieval melodies, the music rescues the game from being a complete failure. | |
| SOUNDS: 55% | |
| The few sounds are okay, but way too limited. | |
| GAMEPLAY: 21% | |
| Unfair and frustrating. The game is designed for people who are into S/M. The game's ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY is not based on skills, but on sheer luck. Flip a coin and start a new run until you get the right items, and pray that you won't encounter too many enemies. |
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| OVERALL RATING: 22% | |
| We would have given Caveblazers an average 60% if it came out in 1993, maybe? (Not even sure about this. 90s Platformers like Kid Chameleon(1992, Megadrive) are infinitely more fun than this.) Since then, countless roguelites came out and now, it feels outdated and useless. Feeling like a significant step down if you already have Spelunky(HD or not), Catacomb Kids, or Vagante, and completely outclassed by Dead Cells, Caveblazers is several decades late. |
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