Cave Story+ Free On Epic

On Monday I still wanted to headbutt the floor following the release of the new Doctor Who trailer for the no-so festive special, while Alexx spoke of a demo for a 3D platformer from the developer behind Slime-san; I capped it off with crime and men with bricks for faces. Tuesday, SWERY’s next game appeared on Steam, Taylor was entranced by dancing rats, and I spoke of Forza possibly getting a new game next year. Wednesday, I headbutted the ceiling while writing a lot about Prime Gaming‘s six latest additions and the guff. All the while, Taylor spoke of VR flying, and Alexx covered Dead Cells‘ new DLC. Thursday, the Just Cause co-creator announced a new studio… Just Cause.

This week’s free game on the Epic Games Store is something that has all the pretentious indie fans crawling out of their hole and yelling. See, my issue with this is simply the type of person that talks about Cave Story with great admiration; you know the person. That type of person that thinks manga, anime, and JRPGs are the only acceptable form of entertainment. The type of person that has lodged an idyllic Japanese cultural view so far down their own throat that they look like your dad in his special online videos where he’s crying. It is the same person that heralds every indie project for simply being special, even when they are crap.

Cave Story, or rather the enhanced edition Cave Story+, is a 2D Metroidvania and indie gem released back in 2004. Yes, it came before most of us knew what E3 really was and Steam wasn’t really a thing either. It was developed by Daisuke Amaya (Often referred to as simply “Pixel”) in his spare time over the five years, and takes inspiration from two classics of gaming and his childhood, Metroid and Castlevania. It is very much retro by design, right down to the fact that the game is in 4:3 instead of the industry standard of 16:9.

It will seem tangential for a moment, but recently Sackboy: A Big Adventure was released. Now, that’s a wonderfully rounded out cast of Dawn French, Richard E Grant, Simon Greenall, and Susannah Fielding; it’s brilliant for casting. However, there is one accessibility feature that blew me away, “Dyslexia Font.” An extensive issue I have with pixel-based graphics and other stylized fonts are simply the difficulties distinguishing between some of the text from either each other or the background.

It may sound like a non-issue for something like Sackboy personally, but there are plenty of other games where smaller and stylized font on no proper background or drop shadow becomes difficult to read properly. Between that, the floatiness of the character, and the general retro feel, I’m left understanding why some enjoy it, however, it is not for me. It is a snapshot for nostalgia through one’s own creative mind, though it was before we were shot at with every bit of pixel-based paraphernalia on a daily basis via Unity and RPG Maker attempts at the same goldmine without a creative vision.

All this week, Cave Story+ is available for free on the Epic Games Store, up to the morning of the 10th of December. Yes, on the release of the most hyped RPG from the studio behind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, what does Epic decide to do to all the journalists and faux-journalists that just rant about nonsense for several hundred words? Next week, I’ll be ranting about Pillars of Eternity‘s Definitive Edition and Tyranny‘s Gold Edition, as Epic offers two massive RPGs that I’m not looking forward to playing for their text-heavy nature. Join me as I masticate my hand off waiting for all of them to inevitably download.