28th August 2025 marks 10 years since Caveman Craig was first released on Steam!
We (Rhys, Tim and Ricky) thought we would make a rare appearance to celebrate and reflect on what Caveman Craig has meant to us, and share a bit about what we're up to these days.
For those of you who still have Caveman Craig on your wishlist but haven't taken the plunge.. we're offering a grokkin' huge discount for the next month, so now's your chance to grab a copy for spare change!
Reflection from Ricky (composer)
Caveman Craig was my very first game, and you never forget your first. It was a wonderful experience that really set me on my path, and I’m grateful it was part of my journey. Even now, it brings a smile to my face whenever I hear from the Parabox team, it carries that special feeling. Congratulations on 10 years on Steam, and a salute to everyone who played and supported it!
Reflection from Rhys (co-creator, coder)
My perspective on the value of publishing a video game has changed considerably in the past decade or so. The lasting impact of Caveman Craig hasn't been the joy of the creative process, nor the fame & fortune (or prospect thereof). For me the most valuable thing about having created Caveman Craig is that I've been able to have a hand in creating fond memories for you - the players. Over the years I have heard from many of you who have said what a big part of your childhood (or adulthood) Caveman Craig was. That is quite inspirational and moving to me.
Of course, many fond memories of my own come to mind when I think about Caveman Craig. Some of you will know that the first iteration of Caveman Craig was a runner up in a video game competition hosted by YoYo Games (the crew behind GameMaker) in 2008. I was in my last year of school. The GameMaker/YoYo Games Community was probably one of, if not the largest online congregation of indie game developers back then. Those were special times, spending most of my non-school time making friends on 64Digits and the GMC and creating games, tutorials, engines and so on for the community to enjoy and use. Caveman Craig was pretty much the last GameMaker thing I released before life & circumstance moved me on from that community.
These days I'm spending most of my spare time writing or listening to music, and hanging out with my lovely wife and my two bunnies.
I play Valorant and Gran Turismo a lot, and plenty of other games in between.
Tim and I still spitball ideas for games regularly, just waiting for the right idea to come along. Honestly I would love to jump back into making video games, so never say never!
Reflection from Tim (co-creator, animator)
Last week at work, for our morning mandatory conversation starter, our team leader asked; Who is the best video game character? So many classic characters flashed by in my mind, but the entrepreneurial side of me saw this as an opportunity... "Caveman Craig!" I answered.
I don't think anybody knew who he was, and I certainly don't think it resulted in us clocking over another sale of our game on Steam.
Nonetheless, I took a peek over at our Steam store, which I do from time-to-time, and realised that we were only days away from hitting TEN YEARS of our beloved game living on Steam.
Caveman Craig was born out of both myself and my little brother Rhys having some spare time. He was a whizz with the software aptly named 'Game Maker', and I was enjoying newfound skills in 2D animation, a career I've enjoyed and grown in to this day.
We smashed together a caveman/dinosaur game for the YoYo Games Ancient Civilisation competition. With little interest in actual history, and plenty of interest in dinosaurs and general brutality, we put together this fun little game which drew inspiration from a lot of games we played together as kids. 2D platformer meets Age-of-Empires-like tribe management, with hilarious deaths most likely influenced by the game Lemmings.
I thought the title Caveman Craig was funny, as Craig is not a typical name heard throughout ancient history, but a common name for men in modern day. We subsequently named Craig's rivals similarly in later versions of the game. (Steve, Neil, John etc.)
The game was well-received - I like to think it was because of the bright coloured cartoon thumbnail that looked quite attractive on the YoYo Games website. We won second-place behind another much more deserving game.
Stoked by the runners-up prize, we got to work on making a better version of the game, mostly from scratch. If I had a funny idea or a feature request, Rhys would often make it clear that it's probably impossible to do, but a rapid clacking on his keyboard and moments later he would've worked it out. My little brother was a coding genius and we could see that so many things were possible with my silly animation and these funny technical ideas. Problem was, it was very hard to finish and seal off the game because there was no end to the crazy things we could keep adding to the game. Have an allosaurus swallow your caveman whole? Sure! Meteor Showers? Sounds great! Mushrooms that make your caveman trip out? Why not!? Amongst all of this, we were caught by surprise when we were greenlit to have our game on Steam! Yikes! We better make sure this game has even more features and funny animation. It's gotta be worth it for our customers!
We spent a while building and improving our game. And just to make sure it had the polish of "real" games, Rhys found an extremely talented musician in Ricky Garcia, who, with his INCREDIBLE cinematic-sounding music, brought emotion and general epic-ness to my dopey cavemen and their on-screen battles. I still think the music is by far the best part of the game.
After finishing the game, we had a LAN party where we invited some friends to come and play Caveman Craig, followed by some actual games... but we found that a lot of people were enjoying our game so much that they just kept going and Call of Duty got shelved for the night!
We told our friends to try and break the game. It was interesting to observe how different people played the game. It was designed with multiple levels, but we discovered that sometimes people liked to dwell on just one level and just keep building up their tribe until the game would kinda crap itself. I suggested to Rhys that we should set a population limit on the Cavemen, or have less dinosaurs or something. Instead, we found that people really enjoyed the chaos of completely filling their screen with caveman and dinosaur battles until their CPUs overheated, so we left the ability to infinitely grow your tribe in the game. Breaking the game was half the fun, though miraculously enough, the game managed to hold itself together and Rhys was able to iron out many of the bugs that came up before and after release.
So anyway, what now? In the ten years since releasing Caveman Craig on Steam, we've spent many hours on the phone talking about the next game we want to make. Then we get bored of the idea. Then a new idea pops up a year later. Repeat.
The reality is that we both became adults with real jobs and responsibilities. That may sound a little depressing, but for me I've been enjoying a very fulfilling career in animation, having done 2D animation work for Disney, Nickelodeon, Dreamworks, Fox and many other big and small animation projects. The genuinely wonderful responsibility of having a family with kids hasn't left any room for zero-budget passion projects.
But every now and again I fire up Caveman Craig on my PC. My kids all want a turn. It's amazing that it still holds up after ten years. And I think "maybe we should make another game?".
