The Cave

The Cave is a puzzle adventure from Double Fine Productions overseen by legendary designer Ron Gilbert, who returned with this game to the genre once made famous by titles like Maniac Mansion. At the start, the player picks three of seven available characters — among them a knight, twins, a scientist, a hermit, a casino security guard, a monk, or an inventor — with whom they descend into the titular talking cave, which shows each visitor a scene fulfilling their deepest desire, whether that's revenge, fame, or a long-lost past.

Gameplay combines platforming exploration with logic puzzles that often require the cooperation of all three chosen characters at once — while one holds a lever, another walks through a corridor, and a third operates a switch elsewhere on the map. Each character also has a unique ability tied to their own story segment, so replaying with a different trio offers new areas and a different narrative. The narrator is the cave itself, whose sarcastic and darkly humorous commentary gives the game an unmistakable Double Fine tone, commenting on each character's weaknesses and triumphs with the same ironic detachment recognizable from the creator's earlier games.

On Wii U, the game launched as a digital eShop title shortly after the console's release and visually relied on a stylized, illustrative look reminiscent of a picture book, accompanied by atmospheric, quiet music underscoring the mysterious mood of the cave and its dark corners. Contemporary reviews praised the inventive concept of seven characters and its dark humor, while criticism pointed to occasionally uneven puzzle difficulty between different character pairs. Today The Cave is seen as a smaller but distinctive stop in Gilbert's body of work and a pleasant, undemanding point-and-click adventure for fans of the classic genre, rewarding patient players willing to play through it multiple times with different trios of characters.

Why play: With its inventive concept of seven characters, dark humor, and atmospheric picture-book styling, it suits fans of classic point-and-click adventures willing to play through it multiple times with different character trios.