There is an entire world beneath our feet. The planet teems with life, some too small to ever be seen... or too reclusive. In Caverns, you can give Mother Nature a helping hand as you shape the terrain of an underground cave to discover 12* different species. More virtual sandbox than game, Caverns is still an exceptionally clever little piece of design whose creativity makes up for limited interaction.
The game is controlled with the mouse, clicking to paint blocks of terrain types. You can change terrains by clicking on different ones in the control panel at the bottom of the screen, or by tapping [C] to cycle through them all. Finding out the right conditions for each creature can be a little tricky. The little tar creature will spring forth from the ground on their own, for example, while the blue water creatures need to fall like water droplets. The cavern you start out in can be manipulated and carved out to make the grungy, dark, critter-ridden underground lair of your dreams. Do you think it would help if you Feng Shui-d the lava? We think Martha Stewart would approve.
Caverns was made in ten hours for a Ludum Dare theme, and as such is pretty basic. You're limited in what you can do, and if you're hoping to build an adorable teeming ecosystem of marketable little creatures you can hug and love and call George, you might be disappointed. You can't interact with the creatures directly. But for its presentation it's still big on charm and it's surprisingly fun to work with. Coming across the correct environment to get all the creatures happily coexisting is a challenge, to say the least. Oh little tar creature, why did you kill the tree creature? The tree creature that wasn't hurting you? The tree creature that took me forever to figure out how to grow?! Why can't you be more like little purple blob creature?
While it may be short, Caverns is still surprisingly inventive and worth a look if you're into experimental design. Fans of virtual pet-ish webtoys will also find a lot to like here. After all, who can say they've never wanted their very own cuddly, painful little critter made of burning lava to call their own? Liars, that's who!
*Update: Now with more species! (Version 0.85)
Walkthrough Guide
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Nice game, but the mouse input is *extremely* laggy for me. (64-bit Firefox with 64-bit Flash on Ubuntu.) I found all the creatures by making a big long horizontal platform with some of each terrain, and then sprinkling some of the others in the air and spending a while observing what happened and then making isolated experiments to try to figure out *why* it happened.
How to make simple creatures:
tar creatures crawl up out of black earth.
droplets fall down out of blue water.
yellow critters crawl up out of sand.
How to make second generation creatures:
tar creatures sink into red lava to become red bouncing creatures.
blue droplets on grey stone turn into teal crawly things. (I only ever got these guys on the stone at the bottom of the screen. I don't know if there's another way to make them.)
blue droplets meeting yellow critters turn into a seed.
How to make third generation creatures:
red bouncing creatures meeting blue droplets become purple balls.
seeds planted on sand become, um, sand trees?
seeds planted on grass become trees
How to make fourth generation creatures:
purple balls on green ground (not grass, the solid green one) turn into green worms.
sand trees that are fed lots of blue droplets will produce spiky sand things.
normal trees that are fed lots of blue droplets will produce tomato creatures.
I'm not sure if my definition of "generations" quite matches what the game uses to report achievements.
I found the easiest way to make all the creatures at once is to split the screen into several compartments:
Make a long corridor along the bottom with water for a ceiling. This will make blue droplets and teal crawlies.
Make a chamber for creating sand stuff. Put sand on the floor and lots of rows of water and sand in mid-air so that the blue droplets and yellow critters will all fall onto the sand.
Make a chamber for growing tomatoes. Put grass on the floor again put lots of rows of water and sand in mid-air above it.
Finally, make a chamber for growing green worms. Make a floor of lava with lots of rows of black earth above it so that the tar creatures will land on the lava. Make a little wall one unit high and then a cliff that drops away so that the tar creatures remain trapped in the lava, but when they turn into red bouncy creatures they can bounce over the wall and into a deeper pit. Line the bottom of this pit with green tiles and put lots of rows of water in the air above it. Hopefully the blue droplets should land on the red creatures, turn into purple balls, then finally the purple balls should turn into green worms.
Posted by: weeble
|
September 3, 2009 9:09 PM
I read all the comments and the walkthrough, and I saw nobody found the last creatures :
Scalactor
Combine a leaf crab with a moldo to get a scalactor
Carni Bori Plant
Combine a scalactor and a targz on acid to get a carni bori plant.
Polly Nolly
Feed exclusively this plant with bouncing flaemme to get polly nolly
Joerons
Feed exclusively this plant with tomatoes and get joerons.
The joerons killing everybody on their path, i couldn't manage to get the 19 creatures coexisting...good luck
Posted by: Pierrec | February 14, 2010 6:57 AM