So here’s a game I played today…

80 seconds Cave is game made by Florian van Strien and uploaded on July 2013. It is a short pixelated platformer which you can beat in probably less than 10 minutes. You play as what I imagine to be a rock with eyes. I don’t know, it’s hard to tell with these simplistic pixel graphics. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I do support most indie-devs using pixel graphics as it pretty much very easy to create art with however, some should at least put more effort than making the player character a symmetrical bump.

I commonly remember Florian as a developer from two other games I played in the past. ‘The Contact Machine’ and ‘circloO’ were those two games and I must say that I enjoyed both of them. The Contact Machine was a simple colorful pseudo-platformer which set itself around physics and was fun and challenging while still keeping simplicity. CircloO had a little more depth but was generally more frustrating especially when you’d get stuck having to try to ram your way over an obstacle hoping the physics would be sympathetic enough to let you through. But it was still fun, I enjoyed it.

So how about 80 Seconds Cave then? Well it seems Florian didn’t want to make another physics platformer and just went with your traditional 2D sidescroller. Only unlike The Contact Machine, the developer didn’t carefully design any levels on his own but it sports a procedurally generated level-design. Now, as much as I appreciate the effort one can put in coding a system like that, I heavily frown against it. I don’t like it when a sidescroller uses randomly generated level design. It just looks ugly. A bunch of virtual computer dice will never simulate the wonders the human brain can have when designing a challenging world. There’s no structure, it just feels like one random obstacle followed by another random obstacle. Besides that, the game just isn’t fun. It’s too easy even on extreme mode and you keep running into frequent power-ups that make the game even more boring.

One thing that’s interesting is that after every mode you complete, whether you win or fail, it generates a story which enumerates the various events that happened during the level. It would help if this wasn’t a retro sidescroller or the generated story would make some actual sense or the fact that it wasn’t too easy so that I could ready the story with a feeling of accomplishment. Instead the feature ended up being another feature I just glazed my eyes over. Above all, the background music doesn’t seem to care either. It’s just a 5-second loop that feels just as bored as I am. (Yes, music has feelings. What are you, some kind of monster?)

On the upside though, it’s incredibly short. probably one of the shortest indie games I’ve ever played so it didn’t waste too much of my time. But I wouldn’t recommend it for when friends come over and you want to tease them by letting them play an incredibly sadistic game to spite them because you secretly hold a deep resentment that has been boiling in your guts for years and you still can’t seem to get the relief from the feeling of their warm blood flowing across you palms as you laugh in their agony w… I’m sorry what was I talking about? Oh yes, let your friends play ‘I wanna be the guy’ instead. Eezy out.

My rating for 80 Seconds Cave: 2/5