Cave Heroes: Idle RPG | a Review
originally published on 13/12/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the mayor and hero manager G.E.M.Simov, a person with the ability to reset everything but retain something when I do, here to tell you about the game “Cave Heroes”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Cave Heroes is an idle game. It is an idle game that has a very hard time actually allowing the Player to progress, be it via playing, or be it via spending money. However, due to the fact that there is no proper in-game store, and there is no dependable way of obtaining the premium currency, even via paying for DLC, it’s mainly “playing”, or, rather, waiting.
But more on that a bit later. First, what is it about?
The Player has two things to look at in regards to progression. There’s the village and then there are the caves. The village depends on progression in the caves, and progression in the caves depends on progression in the village.
The way progression in the caves happens is via three heroes - each having a different set of abilities and different roles, with one being a damage taker (and dealer), another being an exclusively damage dealer, and the last being mostly a healer. These three automatically walk through a level of the caves, starting from 1 and going up (2, 3, 4, etc.) until they run into an enemy. Then, a fight begins, which is handled automatically.
There are four participants in a fight - the three heroes and the one enemy. The order in which the participants take their turns - as the fights are turn based - is decided by a particular Initiative stat, with whoever has the highest going first, the second highest going second, and so on. The heroes attack the enemy, with the one who can heal… Healing, and the enemy attacks the heroes.
The enemies in the game have different quirks that make them ‘challenging’, though everything is solved through the increase of the heroes’ stats. Some of these quirks can be that the enemy hits all three heroes at the same time, or that the enemy attacks twice instead of once, or that the enemy recovers health equal to the damage it deals, or that the enemy ignores certain effects. As stated, however, all of this is dealt with via the application of money and the increase of the heroes’ stats.
Whenever the heroes go down to 0 health, they die and must then begin their exploration of that particular cave level again, though the enemies they have already defeated do not get back up. When the enemy goes down to 0 health, it is defeated and it drops some Gold and a bit of Dark Mana. Eventually, the heroes will no longer be able to defeat any enemies, at which point it will be prudent to either perform a Ritual or to upgrade some buildings in the town section. Alternatively, there are a few options for additional power procurement presented by town upgrades, which constitute spells.
These spells are selected from a toolbar, with each selection costing a certain amount of Mana (another resource generated via the town section), after which the Player must wait a certain amount of time (or spend Crystals, the premium currency) to instantly conclude the wait time. Upon doing that, the Player can then click on a different toolbar, upon which an icon mirroring the Spell icon from the first toolbar has appeared, and it will go into effect. There are various spells, such as healing the heroes, reducing the enemy’s health, resurrecting a dead hero, applying a stack of protection, and so on, with each being capable of allowing the Player‘s heroes to eke out a few more victories than they would otherwise be capable of.
There are even more things that affect fighting, but those mechanics will be mentioned later.
With that said, the way to make the heroes stronger is by building up the town (and by performing Rituals). To build up the town, the Player first needs to have Workers. Then, the Player selects what kind of work the Workers will do, which allows them to start producing a certain amount of a certain resource - based on the type of work that is being done by their Worker.
The resources that Workers can produce are Food, Wood and Metal. Later on, Workers become capable of producing Gold, Gems and Mana. With those resources, the Player must purchase housing, so as to increase their number of Workers, but they must also build storage units, which will increase the maximum amount of a resource that can be had by the Player at once.
Then, the Player is able to use these resources to also build particular structures that increase the number of spells they can have on their toolbar, construct buildings that increase, or provide a baseline Gold, Gem, Mana and Dark Mana production, build structures that provide bonuses to the heroes and allow the creation of Workers that will increase the stats of the heroes, and so on.
Those resources are also useful for improving the Player’s Arsenal, which starts off empty, but as more cave levels are completed, more options appear, with those options allowing the Player to spend resources to increase one of the three heroes’ stats.
There are, of course, many other types of mechanics that interact with one another. There are other things that the Player discovers as they clear cave levels, and then those things can be used in some manner to increase either the power of the heroes or the efficiency of their buildings - such as Relics, Overseers, scrolls and Artifacts.
There is also a thing called Dark Equipment, which, in turn, interacts with another mechanic in the game - pets - which aid with the automation of the gameplay, or allow for the improvement of Dark Equipment. Dark Equipment is found throughout the cave levels and can be ‘equipped’ to provide bonuses to stats. Pets can increase the level of a piece of Dark Equipment, increase the efficiency of Dark Equipment, add additional effects to Dark Equipment and so on. Additionally, they can scrap Dark Equipment to get access to the materials required for the interaction of Pets with Dark Equipment or for the improvement of Relics.
Ultimately, most of this is dependent on whether the Player has or has not performed a Ritual, as the Ritual is the most surefire way of increasing both the stats of the heroes and the efficiency of buildings. Performing a Ritual reverts the progress of the Player back to the start, removing all of their unlocked and built buildings as well as putting the heroes back at the start of cave level 1. However, doing so applies the effects of Perks, through which the stat and efficiency improvements occur.
That is the reset mechanic of Cave Heroes, and it works well enough. Overall, the entirety of the game works ‘well enough’, though there is one great issue - it is slow.
It is very, very slow, with progress naturally starting out at a very rapid, very pleasant pace and ultimately stalling to the point of being almost unmanageable, requiring the investment of 8 or so hours for the procural of 4 perks, when the Player already has 50 of them, and even worse the returns are diminishing. Or, perhaps, the returns are not diminishing, but they become less and less noticeable as time goes on, because the required resources and quantities for progression do not simply scale with the stat and efficiency increases - they far outpace them.
In addition to that, the insane stagnation is accompanied by an obtuse monetization system that does not seem to work. Instead of being able to buy the premium currency, the Player can buy DLC packs that provide an amount of premium currency, but also, and more importantly, provide flat bonuses - such as double Dark Mana loot, double speed of fights, double speed of resource production, more equipment slots, the ability to equip the same type of Dark Equipment twice, and so on.
The thing here is that, even with an infinite quantity of premium currency, the Player cannot rush through progression. The Player MUST spend ungodly amounts of time simply wasting away, waiting for the heroes to do their thing, with the crawl becoming so unbearable that the experience transcends being a chore and becomes more akin to torture, in a vein similar to what “Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms” does to its Player.
Thus? This game is filled with bad gameplay. As with every single idle game, it has interesting, complex systems that are neatly intertwined, but it fails miserably in every other aspect of its gameplay.
1/3
Presentation
Cave Heroes looks very quaint, as it makes use of pixels. In addition to that, most of what it presents is situated right there on the screen, and there is no changing it. There are a number of sections on the game’s window, and in those sections is almost all the art - there’s one that features the cave’s layout, which is purplish and rudimentary, but neat regardless. There’s one that features the town’s layout, even more rudimentary and far more zoomed out than the cave screen, but it’s wonderfully green from the grass and forests, with a bit of blue from a lake, and made interesting via the sprinkling of buildings.
Then, there’s the battle screen, which features the three heroes and an enemy. Those are presented via Sprites, and the heroes each have at least 5 different appearances. As can be expected, making use of pixel-art and going for a cutesy style leaves the Sprites looking very appealing, when they attempt to do so. The quality is decently high. Lastly, there’s the fourth section of the screen, which showcases all the upgrades and ‘things’ the Player has access to, and each is adorned by an icon - with each icon being very well drawn and looking very crisp.
Does that mean that the game is visually good? Indeed, it does. The colors utilized might be a bit bright, but there is no great issue with them. However, where the game does stumble, is with its audio… Because there is almost none of it, and that which is there is very underwhelming.
What’s more is that the game fails in regards to presenting information - there are menus that go on infinitely, menus that are poorly communicated as doing what they do, there is information that is nearly inaccessible, and there’s a large amount of stuff that is not nearly as clear as it needs to be.
That’s somewhat fought back by a very good tutorial which slowly introduces new mechanics to the Player in a manner that allows them to learn what does what and to avoid getting overwhelmed, but the issues that are present do remain, hindering the overall experience. Still, it is better than being bad.
2/3
Story
There are vague indications that there is a story in this game, but they remain mostly that - vague indications that appear in the form of text that must be accessed via menu navigation, which must also first be unlocked via gameplay. In addition to that, there is no indication that the additional text has been unlocked, which although an issue of the game’s Presentation, is also related to the story.
Simply put, the story is conveyed through what amounts to text-based dossier-esque blurbs or snippets, only the Player does not find out that they have access to those dossiers. What is present is interesting, in a sense, and there are a very small number of additional things that show up here and there, but the story is so tertiary that it is almost nonexistent.
Overall? Hire three heroes and send them into the infinite dungeon, while managing a village to support said heroes, until the heroes beat the evil lurking beneath the town. There is a premise, there are some intriguing tidbits of lore, but it is nearly nothing.
1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Does this Sisyphean task that makes it hard to imagine Sisyphus (the Player) happy get the Legendary point for being uniquely special? For being enjoyable? Immensely interesting? Astoundingly beautiful? No, it does not. 0/1
Conclusion
4/10. A neat looking little idle game that does not even really want the Player’s money, instead desiring their time and, clearly, data. It’s not something I’d recommend to anybody, even to idle addicts, as it lacks the oomph that a good idle game has.
In the bag of mediocrity it goes, not bad enough to warrant a spot on the wall, but weak enough to drown in the dust.