I build software. The best place to find me is on Cavemen Review
As I mentioned a few weeks back Cavemen by Lightworks Games has just been released. To encourage everyone to buy it, and to help give feedback to one of the creators (Walter, who used to sit next to me back on MVH) I thought I’d write up a quick review.
Cavemen is a 2D side scrolling puzzle game in the style of the original Lemmings games. It runs on PDA (although will be coming to PC soon) and I must say is quite a lot of fun. I’m up to level 50 of 102 and while it can be frustrating at times, it’s certainly fun enough to keep me coming back whenever I have a few spare minutes waiting for someone or something.
The first thing that will strike you is the amazing graphics which, too put bluntly, are some of the best pixel art I’ve seen for a long time. The characters are far larger than they were in lemmings and this detail has been put to great use. The game has 3 different themes and while I’ve never been overly concerned with this it does mix it up a little which is nice.
The next thing you’ll notice is how polished the game is. I haven’t found any bugs so far, and the guys have done a good job to make sure there aren’t any rough edges which are found in so many games. The UI is elegant and while the little icons can be confusing when you begin, you soon learn what each ability does. While everything is nicely polished my first complaint comes in the need for scrolling. Due to the increased size of the cavemen, and the small screen of a PDA, a small number of levels require you to scroll back and forth. This becomes a little annoying on some levels and just seems to detract from the game a little.
The level design has its ups and downs. There are some levels which are just pure genius, and others that will have you wanting to throw your pda at the wall (it’s just the right size I’ve found). The genius levels seem to be that way as they look quite complex, but once you have an ‘aha’ moment, you wonder how you ever thought the level was hard. The frustrating levels are ones where you know instantly what to do, but have to fight the interface to get your little cavemen to do what you want. This can come from selecting the wrong caveman as they are too bunched together or setting an action a split second to early meaning your caveman falls to his death. 95% of levels however are fairly solid. They’re neither amazing nor annoying, but serve to keep you entertained enough to make buying the game worth it. I think the way for cavemen to excel is to find the formula for the ‘aha’ levels and try and make as many of these as possible. The game itself works so well, it just needs to be pushed over the line with a few more excellent levels, and the removal of the annoying ones.
So that’s the game in a nutshell. Again I highly recommend everyone to at least try out the demo. It’s a lot of fun, and if you were a fan of lemmings back in the day (as I was) you’ll finding it a nice stroll down memory lane while still be refreshingly new. If you really like the art then check out Shaun’s site, he’s another work colleague that’s working on my current project with me.
Update: I’ve been contacted by Walter and he had this to say about Cavemen 1.1:
“We’ve been working pretty solid over the past 3 weeks to get Cavemen 1.1 out. One of the main things we focused on was a set of a-ha levels you pointed out. These take quite a bit of time to come up with and after that there’s still a good few hours to implement and play test them. A level I’m particularly proud of took me 4 hours to come up with the concept and another 5 hours to polish. That’s 9 hours for a single level.“