The Cave Game Review

BY: BRIAN ROBBINS  |  Advergame reviews, Advergames

The Cave is an Advergame from Sony Pictures promoting the upcoming movie of the same name.

Your role is to explore The Cave, assemble your climbing gear, fight the monster and presumably escape.

What I liked: The game is very well done, and plays relatively seamlessly.

The point of view for the game does a good job of immersing the player within the experience, and making them feel like they are in the cave.

The ambient sounds also support the immersiveness of the environment.

What I didn’t like: The portions of the game with mouse control work well, but it makes things even more jarring when I have to use the keyboard. Some of the prompts on the screen seemed to indicate that mouse control could still be used, but it never worked for me.

There also wasn’t a very clear indicator for what to do. The intro seemed relatively compelling, but I kept thinking that I was supposed to click. Eventually I did, and I skipped over a portion of the intro. Admittedly this is a tough thing to balance as having some text on the screen at that point would break the suspension of disbelief.

I also hate games and sites that take over my entire screen. Regardless of how much you want your experience to be the only thing a user is doing, that is just not the case. On a dual-monitor system this was even worse as the game spanned both screens with the game area right in the middle.

There is also way too many load screens, and in general they seem to take too long.

Overall: An average game. It may be compelling for some of the target market, but there is little replay value, and the pacing seems a bit too slow. This is definitely not going to strike a chord with the masses, though I expect to see a decent amount of attention on sites with a younger demographic.