Cave of Wonders - Review

Cave Of Wonders was written by Campbell Wild as a demonstration game for his new text adventure creation system Adrift in 1999. As an advertisement, it does for the creation of text adventures what the Titanic did for sales on cruise ships.

There are many bugs both lurking and stinging you in the face here. An underwater section can be drained yet reappears as undrained thanks to no conditional flags being set. A bottle can be filled once but never again, despite there being ample quantities of filler left lying around. One section of the game disappears if you enter it and perform a certain action, for no apparent reason. The description of the area is replaced by the letter "x." Hmmmm. Taking a particular object require "pluck" and does not recognise "pick" or "take" yet another similar object does not respond to "pluck." You get the general idea.

All this is a shame as without the huge amount of bugs (the game can still be finished but it is a pain) a nice medium sized treasure hunt would exist here. The puzzles are often clever and quite tough and there are quite a few ways to soft lock the game if you make a wrong choice.

There are a few static NPCs and one wonderfully dreadful pun which would be quite happy in Quondam.

The two word parser will give you a real battle of "guess the verb" although many objects can be referred to. Very few synonyms are allowed so exact wording is required. The maximum score is 1000 points although I only managed to attain 970 but still found the treasure-filled cave, the object of your quest.

Parser/Vocabulary (Rating: 5/10)

The room descriptions are perfunctorily adequate without being memorable. The parser is too picky and very few alternative verbs are catered for which of course creates frustration.

Atmosphere (Rating: 5/10)

Middle of the road. Three or four sentences cover most descriptions so it falls far short of a mystical atmosphere; utilitarian reference book rather than mystical novel.

Cruelty (Rating: Nasty)

There are plenty of ways to lock yourself out of victory and quite a few illogicalities too. As previously mentioned emptying a bottle can be game breaking for no clear reason.

Puzzles (Rating: 8/10)

Definitely the reason to play the game. Discovering means of transportation and deciphering maps are dome cleverly.

Overall (Rating: 5/10)

Must do better. For a great Adrift game, try a Larry Horsfield game instead.