For ten weeks straight I kept to my promise of posting every Tuesday. But yesterday, you may or may not have realised, a full Tuesday went by without a List Oriented post. My streak is broken, oh woe, reset the counter.
The truth is, here at Excuse Oriented, that I’ve been back in Western Australia for the week. Two friends married each other. I’ve had beers and gone to dinner and caught up with some friends and family. I’ve patted the dog and sat on the couch and drank coffee and idly scanned the TV options at my parent’s house, which are much like the ones I have at home yet somehow much more enticing, here in this place where all my other obligations feel somehow less immediate. I made calls to Melbourne. I stood in the sun and now I’m watching it pour from the study window. But I haven’t finished Cave Story like I’d promised I would. I haven’t finished the book I brought with me. I’ve hardly done any of the non-trivial pile of looming deadline work, work that I was sure I would find plenty of time to do. And I haven’t played more than a couple of hours of Caveblazers, this game about which I have a blog post now overdue.
This is rather a shame, because Caveblazers seems like a fun time. In different circumstances we might have been good together.
Caveblazers is a 2D platforming game where the player explores a sequence of randomly generated caves filled with monsters. The player is armed with a sword and a bow. Along the way there are items to pick up, including gold (for buying stuff), runes (which provide passive stats and timed abilities), improved swords and bows (for killing monsters better), food (for health), bombs (for blowing things up) and random potions that sometimes do good things and sometimes do bad.
Health is easily lost and scarcely found. Death is frequent, with most of my runs ending within two or three minutes. Death sends you back to the start and takes away your items and money. For these reasons it might be called a Rogue-like game, owing to it echoing conditions that occurred in the classic RPG Rogue, though it’s more specifically reminiscent of Spelunky, so perhaps it might also be called a Spelunky-like game. This previous sentence will look ridiculous regardless of whether you are someone who “knows about” roguelikes or not, I am sorry to say, because it occurs to me that perhaps calling something a “_-like” is unique to videogame parlance. Am I wrong? I suddenly feel quite interested in this, this thing we always do slightly tongue in cheek until it becomes embedded in the discussion and we are doing it without thinking. Look, I am quite tired. I’m just – having being asked about this a few times again recently by people who are less invested in games - conscious of being caught between the problem of using language which is only useful for people who already know how to read about games, and using language which is general enough for everyone to understand but which therefore requires an extra few steps of explanatory language which makes it less interesting for people who already know the things that I suddenly feel need explaining. Possibly this is an issue that I am having because I am a Bad Writer, and a good writer would know how to describe things in the simplest terms while doing this in an interesting way.
So far in Caveblazers I’ve made it to the third level say six or seven times. The third level is a boss fight, though all but once I’ve encountered a different huge arch-monster every time I’ve reached it, each with an array of different attacks to dodge and different ways to chip at their extensive health bar. I’m yet to beat any of them, or really even come that close. So I don’t know what happens after the third level. Presumably more levels like the first two. But possibly not.
When I think of my favourite roguelike games (or, games with reset-at-death elements), I think of turn-based RPGs like Nethack, or Shirin the Wanderer, or I think the longer campaign lengths of FTL or Into The Breach, or I think of the more elaborate world of Dead Cells. I don’t think of Spelunky, which despite often seeing at the top of various Best Of lists, is something I tell myself I’ll get into in The Future, never now. And Caveblazers really is quite a lot like Spelunky.
Maybe it’s my fault for not bringing a controller with me to Perth, despite the game’s opening-screen insistence that this is the best way to play. Maybe it’s my suspicions at having a customisable avatar/character who remains in all permutations distinctly masculine. Maybe it’s the mood and the time and the place and maybe, if I was at home diving into Caveblazers runs while trying to procrastinate an assignment or something or other, or perhaps if I just felt a whole lot less lazy at the moment, I’d have a different attitude towards it. In the meantime police in Victoria are beating up people for protesting a mining convention, important (I believe) sites Kotaku and Deadspin are both in trouble from the people who bought them, I’m half-watching Kate McKinnon and David Chang do Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner in Phnom Penh, and odd memories of mine are bubbling up into nothing in particular.
About: Caveblazers was developed by Rupeck Games, who are now Deadpan Games [wob address], who in either case seems to be the development handle of Will Lewis, from Bristol, who made most of Caveblazers by himself, it seems, which is pretty impressive, all things considered. It was released to Steam in May, 2017. I received it in Humble Jumbo Bundle 9 in August, 2017. This was essentially my first time playing it. 3 out of 21 achievements achieved by your author.
The apparent existence of a multiplayer mod, along with the thought that yes, I should try this with a controller too, gives me reason to try it again sometime in the future.
normal programming to resume next Tuesday with Chaos on Deponia
