Welcome to the Cave Story+ Community hub blog update. New build is up with lots of little improvements. See changelog below! In addition to the usual bugfixes, this update brings improved performance as well as new features for modders. Oh Yeaah!!! Fixes: - Nemesis Challenge not
Welcome to the Cave Story+ Community hub blog update. New build is up with lots of little improvements. See changelog below! In addition to the usual bugfixes, this update brings improved performance as well as new features for modders.
Oh Yeaah!!!
Fixes:
- Nemesis Challenge not unlocking after trading for the Nemesis
- Challenges not being unlocked by items/arms which have been obtained previously
- Bushlands ambush triggering without a delay - DualShock 4 V1 incompatibility (V2 already worked)
- Multiple frames of input latency
- Crash which could occur when unplugging a controller
- Challenges menu having a broken background when there are many entries
- Challenges menu not being able to scroll when there are many entries
- Some challenge-related menus selecting the back/cancel button by default, unlike every other menu
- Only one player being shown on the mini-map
- 'Egg No.XX' being inconsistent with 'Jail No. XX'
- Opening cutscene using the wrong background colour
- Some rooms using the wrong background colour
- Title screen not being visible for the first frame
- Various rendering inefficiencies, which reduced performance on low-end PCs
- Unnecessary lighting/water rendering logic, especially in Classic graphics
The highly rated action-adventure platformer Cave Story+ now has the massive "Cave Story+ Update 2026" available but they dropped the Native Linux version. Read the full article here:
The highly rated action-adventure platformer Cave Story+ now has the massive "Cave Story+ Update 2026" available but they dropped the Native Linux version.
Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/06/cave-story-2026/
The long-awaited public release is here! Cave Story+ 2026 is now available to all players by default, with no need to opt-into a special branch. Once again, a huge thank-you to everyone for providing invaluable feedback and bug reports, which helps to give Cave Story the polish t
The long-awaited public release is here! Cave Story+ 2026 is now available to all players by default, with no need to opt-into a special branch. Once again, a huge thank-you to everyone for providing invaluable feedback and bug reports, which helps to give Cave Story the polish that it deserves!
Fixes:
Organya soundtrack fixes
Some songs using the wrong percussion
Notes ending prematurely upon the song loopingBoss Attack fixes
Music fading out at the start of the Igor battle
Player spawning on the wrong side of the Red OgreBoulder Chamber Balrog spawning in the wrong spot
Corrects him jumping early when initially running directly to the left
Moved 'switch 2P controllers' hotkey from F12 to F11
This way, it does not conflict with Steam's default screenshot hotkey
Made 'speed-up' and 'disable lighting' cheat codes usable outside of Developer Mode
The time counter is now correctly sped-up whilst the corresponding cheat code is enabled
Player character not wearing the Mimiga Mask in the save selection menusWrong open door sprite in the Plantation's Rest Area
Would appear when the door is opened by the Mimiga
CPU usage being far higher than it should be
Should reduce CPU temperatures, fan noise, and battery usage
Game running too fast
Would occur when the PC has not been rebooted in the last 49 days
Reduced frame-pacing latency from 1-2ms to 0.00005msInconsistent colours in the 2x Halloween dialogue portraitsInconsistent naming of 'Egg No.XX' roomsMods folder is automatically created if it does not exist
side from helping shape what we nowadays consider an indie game, Cave Story revitalised the platformer, and specifically the metroidvania, when it hit PC in 2004. Creator Daisuke Amaya's artistic influence is obvious on the likes of Celeste and VVVVVV, for example, but Cave Story
side from helping shape what we nowadays consider an indie game, Cave Story revitalised the platformer, and specifically the metroidvania, when it hit PC in 2004. Creator Daisuke Amaya's artistic influence is obvious on the likes of Celeste and VVVVVV, for example, but Cave Story's real impact is how it demonstrated that one person could make a fun game in their spare time, and that it could get huge by word of mouth alone... Read more.
Cave Story+ is a true classic and the developers have given the PC release an absolutely massive upgrade with tons new for the game including 2-player. Read the full article here:
Cave Story+ is a true classic and the developers have given the PC release an absolutely massive upgrade with tons new for the game including 2-player.
Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/04/the-absolute-classic-cave-story-has-a-huge-free-upgrade-on-pc/
The branch and password needed to access all the new content is: Branch name: ModdersDelight Branch Password: ModPizzaParty Oh Yeaah!!! The massive Cave Story Steam update today, adds a ton of new features and upgrades including 2-player mode, mod support, enhanced visuals, and m
The branch and password needed to access all the new content is:
Oh Yeaah!!! The massive Cave Story Steam update today, adds a ton of new features and upgrades including 2-player mode, mod support, enhanced visuals, and much more!
This update finally brings all of the later console-version additions to the Steam version of the game, including 2-player co-op mode. Venture back into the caves – but this time, bring a friend!
You’ll see many visual elements have been overhauled with this update, with the addition of animated dialogue portraits for all characters, enhanced dynamic lighting and water effects, improved environment shading, widescreen support, and more.
There’s plenty of love for the sound in here along with the visuals, with a total of four different versions of the game’s iconic soundtrack to choose from, as well as a new Jukebox feature to help you enjoy them all in one convenient place.
As for gameplay, you’ll find a number of helpful tweaks and gameplay improvements have been made. A few spots have had their difficulty minorly tuned or streamlined (like stacking puppies!) plus a Sand Pit Challenge level has been added to the game’s bonus challenge mode.
Even if you think you’ve already seen all that Cave Story has to offer, with this update, the game now supports player-created mods for custom graphics packs, challenges, soundtracks and more.
And that’s not even everything. Check the patch notes below for the complete list of changes – and happy exploring!
Good job, Fred. I’m proud of you
- CS+ Switch on PC
- 2-player mode
- Famitracks soundtrack
- Ridiculon soundtrack
- Sand Pit Challenge
- Jukebox
- Widescreen
- Animated and flipped dialogue portraits
- Lighting system
- Physical water
- Water backgrounds
- Map shading
- Strafing
- Skipping dialogue
- Difficulty tweaks
- Jelly stacking
- Puppy stacking
- Escape Booster's pit
- Easier Waterway cabin jump
- Iron Bond acquirement tweak
- Altered warehouse scene
- Modding support
- Stackable mods
- Lua API
- Converted code
- Arms
- Bosses
- Bullets
- Carets
- NPCs
- Player
- Unused code
- NPCs 58 and 79
- Various commented-out lines of code
- Mods can add custom...
- Graphics packs
- Seasonal themes
- Soundtracks
- Sounds
- Challenges
- Fonts
- Screen filters
- Settings
- Allow dialogue portrait flipping
- Enable lighting system
- Enable physical water
- Adjust internal resolution
- Change default player costume
- Conversion of data blobs to JSON
- Starting stage and event
- Tables
- Arms
- Bullet
- Caret
- Music
- NPC
- Stage
- Dialogue portrait animations
- Custom bitmaps can now overlay (instead of replace) vanilla bitmaps
- Per-room custom water backgrounds
- 4x resolution textures
- WAV sounds (instead of PixTone)
- Unified shaded and unshaded map data
- Merged challenge map tiles into main map tiles
- Booster's Lab fork
- CS+ TSC commands
- 2x sprite resolution
- New PXM file format
- Reads and writes JSON map metadata files
- Debug mode
- FPS counter (default)
- NPC list (default)
- Unlocked challenges (default)
- Unlocked jukebox (default)
- Holiday selection (options)
- NPC hitbox viewer (swap-left and pause)
- NPC code viewer (F8)
- Invincibility & infinite booster code (swap-right and pause)
This week's free Epic Game Store giveaway is a small slice of gaming history: Cave Story+, an enhanced version of what the publisher calls "arguably the most well-known indie game of all time." Cave Story comes from solo developer Daisuke Amaya, and the original game was released
This week's free Epic Game Store giveaway is a small slice of gaming history: Cave Story+, an enhanced version of what the publisher calls "arguably the most well-known indie game of all time." Cave Story comes from solo developer Daisuke Amaya, and the original game was released for free in 2004 after five years of work (and is still available). A Metroidvania about a robot trying to save a bunch of oppressed rabbits, it's an unforgettable ride, brutally tough, and can ultimately be a pretty heart-rending journey... Read more.
Cave Story is probably one of the most prolific and best indie games out there, and now you can grab your own copy of this slice of history as a free game to keep. A 2D platformer inspired by Metroid and Castlevania, Cave Story comes from the mind of solo developer Daisuke 'Pixel
Cave Story is probably one of the most prolific and best indie games out there, and now you can grab your own copy of this slice of history as a free game to keep. A 2D platformer inspired by Metroid and Castlevania, Cave Story comes from the mind of solo developer Daisuke 'Pixel' Amaya, and rose to become one of the most talked-about games online around the time of its original release in 2004 for its memorable characters and story, its beautiful retro art design, and its rewarding gameplay systems.
Daisuke 'Pixel' Amaya, the creator of the original Cave Story , worked on the game for five years before releasing it as freeware in 2004. The game is a deeply charming, tough and imaginative Metroidvania-style adventure that ever since release has been something of an indie touc
Daisuke 'Pixel' Amaya, the creator of the original Cave Story, worked on the game for five years before releasing it as freeware in 2004. The game is a deeply charming, tough and imaginative Metroidvania-style adventure that ever since release has been something of an indie touchstone: a great example of what one person can achieve by making exactly the game they want to make... Read more.
A fan-made enhanced edition of Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya’s seminal indie platformer Cave Story has been slapped with a DMCA takedown. Publishers Nicalis have accused Cave Story Engine 2 of using code stolen from the original game’s source – code that they, as developers of Cave Story
A fan-made enhanced edition of Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya’s seminal indie platformer Cave Story has been slapped with a DMCA takedown. Publishers Nicalis have accused Cave Story Engine 2 of using code stolen from the original game’s source – code that they, as developers of Cave Story +, own. But while fears that the publisher planned to wipe all free versions of the game off the internet for good seem to have been misplaced, contention remains over whether Nicalis actually owns the rights to code used by the now-shutted fan game.
December 3, 2020 Cave Story+ is now free to claim on the Epic Games Store. This week's freebie from Epic is Cave Story+, the classic indie platform game from Daisuke Amaya. It's now live, so hurry on over - next week, it'll be replaced by a pair of excellent Obsidian RPGs . In Ca
December 3, 2020 Cave Story+ is now free to claim on the Epic Games Store.
This week's freebie from Epic is Cave Story+, the classic indie platform game from Daisuke Amaya. It's now live, so hurry on over - next week, it'll be replaced by a pair of excellent Obsidian RPGs.
In Cave Story+, you wake up in a cave with no memory of how you got there. You quickly meet the Mimigas, an innocent race of rabbit-like creatures who are being threatened by a mad scientist. It's up to you to explore the caves and figure out a way to save the Mimigas - and along the way you'll have to fight some 20 bosses across 15 different levels and find 10 unique weapons that each has its own upgrades to discover.
Cave Story+ is a re-release of the original Cave Story, and this version lets you pick between the original 320x480 graphics and the updated 'HD' version found in the WiiWare port. It also features a new English script, remastered music (as well as the original soundtrack), and six new play modes, including a boss rush.
I settled a ‘Dracula vs. Frankenstein’ debate the other day by referring to the authority on power rankings: Top Trumps cards, where Dracula trounces Frankenstein . Granted the debate was about the books rather than a monsterfight, but it’s still fun to throw fictional folks toge
I settled a ‘Dracula vs. Frankenstein’ debate the other day by referring to the authority on power rankings: Top Trumps cards, where Dracula trounces Frankenstein. Granted the debate was about the books rather than a monsterfight, but it’s still fun to throw fictional folks together to see who’d win a rumble. Enter Blade Strangers, a crossover fighting game released today. Along with pugilists from previous games by developers Studio Saizensen, it draws characters from games including Shovel Knight, The Binding Of Isaac, Azure Striker Gunvolt, and Cave Story. But which is better, a spade-swinging knight or a weeping dead child? There’s only one way to find out: fiiight!
As an avid The Binding Of Isaac player and a fan of absurd disparity in fighting game crossovers, I’m delighted to hear that Isaac has joined the cast of Blade Strangers. Isaac, a murdered child who in his native roguelikelike top-down shooter fights sentient poos by crying on th
As an avid The Binding Of Isaac player and a fan of absurd disparity in fighting game crossovers, I’m delighted to hear that Isaac has joined the cast of Blade Strangers. Isaac, a murdered child who in his native roguelikelike top-down shooter fights sentient poos by crying on them, will face a roster of heavily-armed crossover characters including Quote, the warbot hero of Cave Story. A bit like watching Butt-Head fight Godzilla on Salty Bet. That said, seeing Isaac in action in the new trailer below, I am surprised by how much of a scrapper the wee guy is. Even if he does cheat by getting his mum to fight for him. (more…)
Welcome to our round-up of the best Metroidvania games. That slightly awkward portmanteau refers to a hybrid genre inspired by Metroid and Castlevania. They tend to be 2D platformers that have you exploring dungeons, defeating bosses, and picking up items that unlock new zones of
Welcome to our round-up of the best Metroidvania games. That slightly awkward portmanteau refers to a hybrid genre inspired by Metroid and Castlevania. They tend to be 2D platformers that have you exploring dungeons, defeating bosses, and picking up items that unlock new zones of the map. Within this simple format there is plenty of room for variation and, it turns out, lots of gorgeous art.
A few of the games on the list have been lovingly crafted by small teams and even individuals over the course of a decade or so. Others, like Dead Cells, experiment with fusing the metroidvania with other genres to create a powerful hybrid. Whichever games you pick, expect lots of 2D platforming and some tough boss fights.
Ori and the Blind Forest
Ori's warmly animated world and slightly tearful opener barely hint at the incredibly tricky platforming challenges that follow. PC Gamer's Philippa Warr has compared this to a teddy bear that wants to punch you in the face—it's a cute and beautiful-looking game, but damn tricky. The pleasant soundtrack puts you at ease while the game rarely does.
Axiom Verge
One of the very best modern examples of the form, Axiom Verge is set in a dark, Giger-esque alien world populated by mysterious giant mechanical beings and, of course, a slew of bullet hell boss monsters. New paths open up as you discover fresh alien gadgetry, like a trenchcoat that lets you phase through walls, and a device that lets you control a small alien bug to crawl into new cave systems.
Combat is simple—blast the alien things flapping around each level—but there are loads of weapons to discover, and plenty of secrets if you’re determined enough to glitch or blast your way through secret walls. It’s a sinister and slightly unnerving game with some genuinely dark moments, but that makes it a fitting tribute to the lonely hostile corridors of the original Metroid games.
Hollow Knight
This one takes a while to get going, but once you have a few upgrades it’s a spectacular hand-drawn metroidvania with a snappy melee combat system. Hollow Knight borrows its melancholy apocalyptic atmosphere from Dark Souls, and also its currency recovering system—if you make it back to the place you died you can reclaim your last life’s earnings.
Hollow Knight looks gorgeous, and it’s full of interesting bug characters that sell you new gear and give you extra quests. The bosses are challenging and the dodge-and-slash combat is a serious test of skill once you’ve unlocked a few moves and started running into the game’s more serious enemies. The world is beautifully put together, too, and you learn more about the fate of the city as you dash, skip, and double-jump into new zones.
Owlboy
You’ll notice that many of these games are set underground in endless cave systems. Owlboy is set in a floating cloud kingdom. As said Owlboy, Otus, you have to flap around the world in a slightly cumbersome manner befitting a character who is regarded as an idiot by his village. You can teleport friends into your claws as you fly around. Different pals come with different abilities; some will fend off nearby enemies with projectile attacks, others will help you to access new zones in true metroidvania fashion. It’s tricky to say much about Owlboy without spoiling the story, but suffice to say it’s an emotional ride depicted in lovingly detailed pixel art.
Shadow Complex Remastered
Blast your way through a military compound with machine guns in this futuristic Metroidvania. It’s billed as a “2.5D” game, which means you run and jump on a 2D plane, but can shoot into the background as soldiers and battle robots. You play as an ordinary man called Jason Fleming who gets lost on a hike and stumbles across a high-tech group bent on starting a civil war in the US. The game escalates from there you strap on their armour, raid their armoury and start blasting their mechs. The game was originally released on XBOX Live Arcade, but lives on Steam now as Shadow Complex Remastered.
Cave Story+
Daisuke Amaya’s seminal indie metroidvania is available on PC as Cave Story+, which features the original 320x240 visuals and the updated version. You play an amnesiac boy who wakes up in a cave full of rabbit folk called Mimigas. They are being picked off by the malign creations of a mad scientist, who you need to chase across 15 levels. It’s a big game, especially considering it was made by one very dedicated creator with a clear love for the 16-bit era. An absolute classic and a must-play if you love metroidvanias.
Iconoclasts
From one solo creator to another. Joakim Sandberg spent many years painstakingly designing, animating and composing for Iconoclasts. The result is a cheery and colourful metroidvania starring a friendly mechanic called Robin. This is a relatively shooty one featuring more than 20 bosses, but the worlds are packed with chatty characters. It’s worth picking up to see what seven years of one guy’s life’s work looks like.
Steamworld Dig 2
Approachable, and not too difficult, the Steamworld Dig games deliver a gentle hit of Metroidvania action supplemented by lots of Terraria-style digging. You can pickaxe your way through the levels, but this isn’t a sandbox. You have to tunnel your way to new zones and grab new gadgets to upgrade your hero, a steam-powered cowboy robot in the first game and a blue woman in flying goggles in the second. The sequel has more varied environments and a bigger world to explore, so that’s the best place to start.
Dead Cells
Dead Cells straddles the line between Metroidvania and roguelike, which makes it a warped child of Super Metroid, Castlevania and Rogue. You battle through randomised dungeons, starting from the beginning each time you die. As you chop up enemies in beautifully animated exchanges of sword-blows and bow attacks they drop cells that you can pour into your character.
This persistent element eventually gives your guy the sturdiness to reach new zones you haven’t seen before, fulfilling the typical metroidvania exploration pattern. Dead Cells is a game about blasting through dungeons as quickly and efficiently as possible. When you arrive in an area a timer starts on a hidden treasure door somewhere on the level, if you can find it before the timer expires, you get access to a room full of special items and sweet cash. Dead Cells is a high pressure game compared to others in this list (bar Ori and Hollow Knight), but if you like action and great pixel art Dead Cells is a good option, though it still has some time to mature in Early Access.
Last week, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds smashed the Steam peak player records . The previous record-holder, Dota 2, while admittedly made by one of the world’s biggest and most powerful games companies, began as a Warcraft mod. These days, we barely blink an eye at the idea that
Last week, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds smashed the Steam peak player records. The previous record-holder, Dota 2, while admittedly made by one of the world’s biggest and most powerful games companies, began as a Warcraft mod. These days, we barely blink an eye at the idea that a game can come from nowhere and shake through word-of-mouth, clever concepts, a bit of cool technology like Portal’s… well, portals… or simply by hooking into some reservoir of good feeling, and accomplish more than any marketing budget can dream of. Minecraft is this generation’s Lego. Undertale is one of its most beloved RPGs.
Indeed, the world of indie development is now so important that it’s hard to remember that it’s only really a decade or so old. That’s not to say that there weren’t indie games before then, as we’ll see, but it was only really with the launch of Steam on PC and services like Xbox Live Arcade that the systems were in place to both get games in front of a mainstream audience, and provide the necessary ecosystem for them to quickly and confidently pay for new games.
In 1979 Richard Garriott set out on his path to buying a castle and going into space by selling copies of his first RPG, Akalabeth, in ziploc bags at his local computer store
The massive success of indie games on Steam has of course come with attendant pitfalls. The early access program gave small studios the ability to beta test their games with player numbers they would not otherwise never reach, and gave players the ability to take part in shaping games. However, a lack of guidelines left players and developers with very different expectations as was seen in the reaction to a paid expansion being released for Ark: Survival Evolved while it was still in early access. Steam Greenlight made it easier for indie games to get on Steam but became a popularity contest that was easily gamed, leading Valve to replace it with Steam Direct.
All this is largely taken for granted these days, with the big challenge for modern indie games being to stand out. Simply getting onto Steam back then could set a studio up for life. These days the market is full to bursting, with most new releases disappearing from sight almost at once.
In both cases though, it’s a world away from how the market began.
Back to the start
The exact definition of ‘indie’ has never exactly been cut-and-dry. To some, it’s an aesthetic, best summed up by the classic bedroom coder. To others, it’s a more commercial distinction, of working without a publisher. To others, it’s ultimately about the work, with an indie game standing out more for being not the kind of thing you get from a commercial company, rather than really focusing on who made it.
There are many definitions to play with, and few hard lines to draw. The poster-children of ’90s shareware, id Software (who you may know courtesy of a little game called Doom), began working under contract for a company called Softdisk, cranking out games like Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, Hovertank 3D, and Catacomb 3D, before moving on to make games with/for shareware giant Apogee.
In the very early days of gaming, just about everybody was indie to some extent. In 1979 Richard Garriott set out on his path to buying a castle and going into space by selling copies of his first RPG, Akalabeth, in ziploc bags at his local computer store (one of those copies then ended up in the hands of California Pacific, who offered Garriott a publishing deal). Sierra On-Line began in 1980 as just husband and wife team Ken and Roberta Williams, making simple adventure games like Mystery House that nevertheless pushed the boundaries of what people expected from games at the time—like having graphics—before booming to become one of the biggest and most important companies in gaming history.
What do you do if you don t have the money for big boxes? Ziploc bags are your friends.
Companies could emerge from almost anything. Gremlin Interactive began as a computer store called Just Micro, while DMA Design, originally Acme Software, which would make its name with Lemmings and much later become Grand Theft Auto creator Rockstar, began from its founders meeting up at a computer club in Dundee and ultimately signing with Psygnosis. Whole genres were created from a single game, such as Football Manager in 1982.
The speed of all this took many by surprise, with Balance of Power creator Chris Crawford saying in 1984, "We have pretty much passed the period where hobbyists could put together a game that would have commercial prospect. It’s much more difficult to break in, much less stay in. If you want to do a game, do it for fun, but don’t try to do game designs to make any money. The odds are so much against the individual that I would hate to wish that heartbreak on anyone."
The shareware revolution
But of course, people continued. The PC was largely left out of much of it, however, due to the relatively high cost of disks and its general perception of not being a gaming machine. In the UK, the main indie scene in the ’80s was on cassette based 8-bit systems like the ZX Spectrum, with publishers happily accepting almost any old tat, recording it to a tape, sticking it in a box, and selling it for a few pounds at newsagents, game stores, and anywhere else that would take copies. They were cheap, sometimes cheerful, and allowed for endearing weirdness like 1985’s Don’t Buy This—a compilation of the five worst games sent to publisher Firebird.
It would be many years before most indie PC games could get that kind of placement. Instead, there was shareware. The concept dates back to the 1970s, though it was popularized by PC-Write creator Bob Wallace in 1982. Rather than having a central distributor like a regular published game, users were encouraged to copy software and pass it along. If they liked it, they’d then send the creator a check to unlock the full thing or get more of it.
In the case of Apogee Software, and indeed what became known as the Apogee model, a game might have three parts. The first one would be free, and free to share, the other two commercial and only for registered purchasers to enjoy. (Not that anyone really listened, as the vast, vast numbers of pirated copies of Doom probably shows better than anything.)
The beauty of the system was that anyone could distribute these games, with the rule being that while you weren’t allowed to sell the shareware version, you could charge for materials. That meant games could appear on magazine cover disks and later CDs. They could be on any university server or dial-up BBS or services like Compuserve and AOL. If you wanted a relatively full choice however, you often needed to send off for them. Whole companies were set up to sell just the trial versions, sending out printed catalogues of their stock and charging by the disk.
By the mid-90s of course the popularity of CD had rendered this relatively pointless, with ‘1000 Games!’ CDs available in supermarkets and bookstores and anywhere else there might be an audience, rarely mentioning the part about them being glorified demos. Much like on Steam today, at this point most smaller games got lost. Still, as a player, it was an almost inexhaustible feast.
Not every game could be Wolfenstein 3D and promise a fight with Robot Hitler if you paid
As crazy as sending off a check to get a game might seem, it worked. In a few cases, registered shareware games even made the jump to boxed products in stores, though that was relatively rare. Either way, shareware was hardly a license to print money for most, but it supported many a developer throughout the '90s and made others their fortunes. Epic MegaGames began with the text-based RPG ZZT before becoming the company that made Unreal. Duke Nukem began as a very simple 2D side-scroller, notable mostly for oddities like the main character wearing pink and just wanting to save the world so that he could get back to watching Oprah, but nevertheless blossomed into Duke Nukem 3D before publicly wilting into Duke Nukem Forever.
And there were many more stars too, regularly appearing in new games or simply popular ones that kept showing up, like Skunny the squirrel and his awful platforming (and ultimately karting adventures), Last Half of Darkness, and Hugo’s House of Horrors, much beloved by magazine and compilation editors for its extremely pretty first screen, and never mind that it was all made of clip art and every other room in the game was barely MS Paint-level scribbles.
The alternative industry
Shareware's big draw for players was, inevitably, free games. The downside of the Apogee model and others that erred on the generous side was that a whole episode was often enough—especially as that’s where the developer’s best work tended to be. Compare for instance the deservedly beloved shareware episode of Commander Keen: Goodbye, Galaxy! where you run around a beautiful, varied planet, with the dull space adventure of its commercial sequel. Not every game could be Wolfenstein 3D and promise a fight with Robot Hitler if you paid.
Less cynically though, shareware gave many genres their home. The PC was typically seen as a business machine, with its commercial successes often adventures, RPGs and other slower and more cerebral offerings. There were platformers and beat-em-ups and similar, but they were usually poor conversions from other platforms at best, with few worth taking a risk on.
If the PC ever had a mascot platformer , it was Commander Keen. The shareware version of Goodbye, Galaxy! was his finest hour.
Shareware removed that risk factor for customers, while letting developers show off. The original Commander Keen, while simplistic to modern eyes, was proof that the PC could do console-style scrolling, even if it wouldn’t be until 1994’s Jazz Jackrabbit that anyone could seriously claim to be doing convincing 16-bit console-style arcade action and visuals. (Even then it wasn’t a very strong claim, but luckily by this point the PC had Doom and so didn’t care.)
This led to a flurry of games you really couldn’t get elsewhere, or that were in very short supply on the shelves, from vertical shooters like Major Stryker, Raptor, and Tyrian, to fighting games like One Must Fall, to quirky top-down RPGs like God of Thunder, and racing games like Wacky Wheels. It offered a great split. When you wanted a deep, polished experience, you had the commercial game market. For action fun, there was shareware, not least because when we did get big games like Street Fighter II, they tended to stink. Shareware supported the industry through much of the '90s.
The high cost of indie
By the mid-90s though, there was a problem. Commercial games began rapidly outstripping what bedroom teams could do, both in terms of technology and complexity of content. While there were engines available, they were mostly poor quality, with nothing like Unity on the market and the likes of Quake and Unreal costing far too much for anyone but other companies to license.
If you wanted to play with that kind of technology, you were looking at making mods instead. This was the era that gave us the likes of Team Fortress (1996) and Defense of the Ancients (2003), but also where the indie scene became largely forgotten. This wasn't helped by the fact that indie had essentially no place on consoles at all, despite a few nods over the years like Sony’s Yaroze console, a development PlayStation aimed at hobbyists released in 1997. The PC saw its own push towards home development with tools like Blitz Basic/BlitzMAX (2000) and Dark Basic (also 2000), with the goal of inspiring a new generation of bedroom coders. However, despite selling reasonably well, none of them gained much traction or saw many releases.
Jeff Vogel s Spiderweb Software has been making RPGs since the '90s. They look simple, but fans keep coming back for their depth.
The indie scene as a whole ceased to be a big player in the market—which isn’t to say that it vanished. Introversion’s Uplink for instance was a big hit in 2001. Jeff Vogel’s Spiderweb Software started releasing old-school RPGs like Exile and Geneforge in 1995. PopCap began in 2000, becoming the giant of casual games like Bejeweled, Peggle, Bookworm Adventures, Plants Vs. Zombies, and Chuzzle—not bad for a company that was originally called ‘Sexy Action Cool’ and planned to make its debut with a strip poker game.
And of course, there are other notable exceptions, such as Jeff Minter, who never stopped making his psychedelic shooters both for himself and others. However, it wasn’t until 2004 when Steam nailed digital distribution that the market had a chance to explode and offer a real chance of going it alone.
The turning point
Steam wasn’t the first digital distribution system, and at its launch it wasn’t even popular, with Valve forcing it on players for both Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike. However, it was the first major attempt that nailed the details, like being able to download your games on any computer you owned rather than having them locked to just one, and being able to do so perpetually, rather than simply for a year, as was the case with most of the competition.
The results spoke for themselves. When Valve was a lot pickier, and being backed by a publisher was a distinct advantage to getting onto the system, any developer who managed to get onto Steam effectively received a license to print money. Farther afield, though games not on Steam were at a distinct disadvantage, the legitimisation of digital distribution as a concept certainly raised most boats.
And with all this came something just as important: the indie game ecosystem. With money to be made and developers flocking to indie for all sorts of reasons (being tired of the big companies, wanting to make a go of an independent project) it became viable to create tools and systems to help make the scene. Game Maker for instance, and Unity and Flash. Today, would-be indie developers have the tools to go head-to-head with even the biggest studios, albeit typically on a smaller scale, as well as explore more cost-effective options like pixel art and procedural 3D, while services like Kickstarter and Fig offer a way of seeking funding without immediately selling out.
This also opened the definition of ‘indie’ even further, with companies seriously able to consider going it alone, without a publisher. Not everyone could be Double Fine, raising $3.5 million for Broken Age, but many have had huge successes—Pillars of Eternity pulling just under $4 million, the Bard’s Tale getting $1.5 million and in the height of Kickstarter fever, even Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe managing to raise $650,000 for a remake of the first game.
Cave Story was one of the first games to get people talking about indie releases, beyond Flash games and the like.
It’s at this point that the word 'indie' really catches on. Again, it’s not that it was never used, but until this point the scene wasn’t big and important enough to warrant a position as basically a shadow industry in its own right. The release of Cave Story in 2004 was where people really started talking in those terms, with Indie Game: The Movie in 2012 cementing this, highlighting three of the most successful titles of the time—Braid, Fez and Super Meat Boy.
Microsoft embracing the scene via Xbox Live Indie Games played its part, as did their XNA development system, and attempts to make a big deal out of indie launches during its "Indie Game Uprising" events between 2010 and 2012.
Elsewhere, the IGF (Independent Games Festival) launched in 1999 was also going from strength to strength, drawing more attention to the likes of Darwinia, Monaco and Crayon Physics Deluxe. We also saw more overtly indie friendly portals like itch.io, and the Humble Indie Bundle, offering new marketplaces and ways of selling games—even if many later bundles proved a dead-end.
Perhaps most excitingly, it’s now that we start to see whole genres and styles largely associated with the indie market either flourish or come into existence, not least the ‘walking simulator’—games primarily about exploring a space and a story through environmental detail and voiceover. The first big name here was Dear Esther, a free mod released in 2008 and later remade in 2012, with later examples including Gone Home, Firewatch, and Everyone’s Gone To The Rapture.
Braid helped prove that indie games could be artistic works of love, equal to any commercial release.
There’s also the pixel-art aesthetic of games like VVVVVV, Super Meat Boy, and the original Spelunky, and for many old-school gamers, a return to brutal old-school difficulty. And somehow I doubt we need to say much about Minecraft. (It’s been quite popular, and influential.) Classic point-and-click adventures also saw a resurgence outside of Germany, largely spearheaded by the Adventure Game Studio creation engine and the success of Wadjet Eye Games’ The Blackwell Legacy, Gemini Rue, Technobabylon, and the upcoming Unavowed.
But it’s of course reductive to pick specific genres. The joy of indie games is that as long as the money can be raised somehow, a passionate team can take on more or less whatever they like, free of publisher interference or perceived wisdom, allowing for arty games like Limbo and Bastion (distributed by Warner Bros, but only as a publishing partner), throwbacks to lost genres like Legend of Grimrock, exploratory pieces like The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide, or completely new concepts like Superhot, where time only moves when you do, and the ferociously complex Kerbal Space Program, where difficulty really is a matter of rocket science.
The downside is that as ever, it’s not enough to simply make a game. An indie title buffeted with word of mouth can sell millions, but far more are doomed to languish largely unplayed and discussed in the depths of Steam’s increasing piles or other services’ far less traveled shelves. The initial gold rush is very much over. Still, plenty of gold remains. It’s impossible to predict what game will be the next Spelunky, the next Minecraft, the next Undertale, or the next Super Meat Boy, but absolutely no risk at all to bet that whatever it is, it’s already on its way.
Kero Blaster's chiptune soundtrack is a perfect analogue for the game itself: effortlessly upbeat and cheery one moment, dramatic or laid-back the next, but always sounding like it could've come from an NES if a composer had spent the past 25 years mastering its sound chip. Kero
Kero Blaster's chiptune soundtrack is a perfect analogue for the game itself: effortlessly upbeat and cheery one moment, dramatic or laid-back the next, but always sounding like it could've come from an NES if a composer had spent the past 25 years mastering its sound chip. Kero Blaster is a throwback 8-bit shooter without an ounce of waste: its minimalist story sends a hardworking frog through a viney forest, a tumbleweed-swept mesa, and other charming levels filled with somehow more charming enemies.
I wouldn't call Kero Blaster a love letter to the simpler games of the past, because it doesn't wink at you with its pixel graphics and old-school Japanese platforming. Kero Blaster just is one of those games, an NES shooter that happens to run on modern PCs. When I wasn't running out of lives and stuck replaying levels, I was having a great time.
Kero Blaster is Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya's take on NES classic Mega Man. Pixel's last big game was Cave Story, a brilliantly designed shooter every bit as good as its inspiration, Super Metroid. Kero is a far humbler game, carved up into compact levels with none of Cave Story's exploration or hidden backstory. But the link between the two is obvious: the same purity of jumping and shooting is intact, and Kero Blaster ties its levels together with story vignettes focused on a cast of four nameless animal characters. Together they run the business Cat & Frog, which oversees teleporter nodes scattered around the world. When mysterious creatures disable those teleporters, the frog gets stuck with the field work of repairing them.
The Kero rhythm
As Kero Blaster's silent amphibious hero, I blasted my way through a half dozen levels, picking up three new weapons along the way and money to upgrade those weapons and expand my lifebar. My lifebar needed serious expanding. Kero Blaster is not an easy game: every enemy attack takes off a full heart, and with the initial three HP, I died quickly. But Kero Blaster never feels unfair or overwhelms the screen with bullets like Contra: enemies move and attack in learnable, predictable ways.
Some touches of modern design also ease the difficulty. A generous invincibility period after taking damage keeps enemies from killing you with awkward sprite-on-sprite bumbling. The shop allows you to extend your lifebar to survive half a dozen hits. At one point, you get a coat, which Kero Blaster's frog hero wears. It lets him take one hit without damage.
The coat is a big deal.
I was grinning ear-to-ear when I picked up the coat. It's seriously dapper Resident Evil 4's Leon S. Kennedy rezzed down into an 8-bit frog. I immediately stepped on something spiky and lost the coat. That made me sad. The coat isn't a big deal because it looks cool, though it's a big deal because Kero Blaster is so deliberately designed that every powerup is a hard-earned addition, and every platform and enemy placement is carefully calculated.
Money accrues like a gold IV drip at first, so I chased every single coin to upgrade my weapons. The frog moves slowly, like a hero of the NES era, and he can't shoot diagonally. Horizontal and vertical attacks require precise positioning to hit enemies and dodge their attacks, which often travel in a straight line. But there are clever ways to avoid those attacks: the bubble powerup reminiscent of Mega Man 2's Bubble Lead shoots a stream of watery orbs that bounce around and roll off ledges.
The enemies are all weird and silly and creative and attack in a fun variety of ways. One hid in a trashcan until I got close. I had to jump to trigger his attack. Another threw coins at me to lure me in, then pelted me with books like the world's lumpiest demon librarian. Each level is short they took me 10 or 15 minutes when I was playing slowly and none of them waste time with repeated enemy encounters or drawn-out boss fights. Bosses die quickly to powered-up weapons, and it feels good to kill them without taking damage after a couple pattern-learning deaths.
It's not easy bein' green
I died an embarrassing number of times in Kero Blaster. Enough to feel like I wasn't as good at the game as I should be, since I conquered Cave Story with little difficulty. As much as I appreciated the deliberate pace of progression, I found myself playing through a few levels far too many times. The same thing kept happening: I'd make it most of the way through a level without dying, then get stuck on one particularly hard part (why am I so bad at killing those birds?) or die three times to a boss, which meant starting the level from the beginning. I didn't mind going through a level twice I was eager to do it better. The third or fourth time, I got a little frustrated.
Around the fifth level, I got over that difficulty hump by grinding enough gold to buy hearts and upgrade my primary weapon. As distinct and potentially interesting as each of Kero Blaster's four weapons are, I stuck with the basic rapidfire gun about 80 percent of the time. The others I only found useful in sporadic situations, and the starter weapon consistently dealt more damage much more quickly. I could have used the other weapons more often, but they rarely seemed like the best tool for the job. In a game that feels so thoughtfully designed and balanced in all other aspects, I was disappointed by how seldom I used Kero Blaster's full arsenal.
I enjoyed Kero Blaster enough to blast through its first few levels a second time in New Game+, and like he did with Cave Story, Amaya's hidden some secrets for that second playthrough. Speedrunning levels in New Game+ with powerups intact is a fun reminder of how far you've come in a few hours, and there's an air of mystery to the story and its characters that sticks with you. Just don't go in expecting Cave Story's grandeur Kero Blaster is an intentionally short, straightforward game. While dozens of Kickstarters use nostalgia as a selling point, Kero Blaster unassumingly shows how to make an 8-bit platformer for modern PCs with a light contemporary touch. It's refreshing to play a game with such mechanical purity, even if it doesn't do much we hadn't seen by 1993.
Studio Pixel's Cave Story was a pillar of the formative indie scene - and now a follow-up of sorts has emerged in the form of his sidescrolling platform shooter Kero Blaster, which releases today. It's a momentous, nostalgic and slightly melancholy occasion - how much has changed
Studio Pixel's Cave Story was a pillar of the formative indie scene - and now a follow-up of sorts has emerged in the form of his sidescrolling platform shooter Kero Blaster, which releases today. It's a momentous, nostalgic and slightly melancholy occasion - how much has changed in the world of independently created games in just six or seven years. I can't say if Kero Blaster is any good or not yet - its free prologue Pink Hour was too brief and too difficult to really get to grips with - but a recent trailer hit all the right notes, so I'm hopeful that the old Pixel magic is there.
After Cave Story, and the many games inspired by it, you might be expecting another interlocking, sprawling Metroidvania, but with Kero Blaster billing itself as a "classically-styled 2D side scrolling action game packed with adventure", I'm expecting a more guided, action-heavy experience from this one. There appears to be a huge focus on collecting, and upgrading, crazy weapons, before its froggy hero uses them to blast adorably evil enemies to smithereens.
Kero Blaster can be had for $7.99, or in a bundle with its soundtrack for two dollars more. The following video offers a preview of all the smooth and catchy chiptune noises we can expect to hear in the game.
If this trailer for Pixel's long-awaited follow-up to Cave Story doesn't lift you up, then I'm sorry but you might be a soulless husk - either that or you aren't overly fond of platforming, chiptunes, or Pixel's expressive yet simplistic art style. One of the two. We've known abo
If this trailer for Pixel's long-awaited follow-up to Cave Story doesn't lift you up, then I'm sorry but you might be a soulless husk - either that or you aren't overly fond of platforming, chiptunes, or Pixel's expressive yet simplistic art style. One of the two. We've known about Gero Blaster for a while now, but it's recently been renamed Kero Blaster and been given a brand new video, which affords us our first proper gawp at the soon-to-be-released sidescrolling platform shooter.
Is May 11th good for you? Well that's a shame, because that's when it's releasing - for $7.99, no less. Kero Blaster, by the way, concerns a gun-happy frog whose monster-killing job takes him to a variety of nicely pixellated locations across the globe. Expect weapon upgrades, giant coins, and barely any travel allowance, as that big trailer up there makes pretty clear.
Now until Monday, August 5th at 10am pacific, pick up the Good Friends Bundle and get these games for a great price! BIT.TRIP Presents... Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Runner2 - Good Friends Character Pack Cave Story+ Machinarium Portal 2 Psychonauts Super Meat Boy
Now until Monday, August 5th at 10am pacific, pick up the Good Friends Bundle and get these games for a great price!
BIT.TRIP Presents... Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Runner2 - Good Friends Character Pack Cave Story+ Machinarium Portal 2 Psychonauts Super Meat Boy
