Cavern of Dreams Review (Zer0_Ph34r)
A Dream-like game, but not always in the best ways
Cavern of Dreams is an N64 inspired puzzle platformer that is trying to change up the platforming genre by creating a unique movement mechanic that helps it stand out, but not always in a good way.
There isn't much story here, but what story exists is enough to keep the plot coherent. The main pull of this game is the nostalgia and level designs.
Each level is visually interesting and compelling, and each world has at least one character in it to interact with, which is always a nice touch. The levels are large enough to require exploring, but not so large that they become tedious to navigate, which is great considering the higher power of modern consoles often lead platformers to become bloated.
There are 3 main collectibles in this game; eggs, mushrooms, and cards. The eggs are your siblings and tie into obtaining character abilites, the mushrooms allow you to open shortcuts to each level, and the cards unlock gallery entries giving you insight into the different "characters" in the game. These collectibles are usually easy to find but require skill to obtain, which is a great way of setting up a platformer.
The main thing that sets Cavern of Dreams apart from other platformers is the actual platforming you'll be doing. In this game, rather than having a double jump, to reach greater hights you must jump on the ground twice with proper timing. This is what I find to be the greatest issue to the fun of this game. The reason this is a problem is two fold: 1. it makes platforming take longer than neccessary because you have to stop in place and jump twice constantly to reach the height you need, and 2. the game also has a glide mechanic that uses the jump button, so if you mistime the jump, you'll begin gliding and it'll prevent a double jump, or worse, take you off a ledge.
Honestly, the movement mechanics in this game as a whole appear to be aiming at making the game a high skill floor and high skill ceiling kind of game, but it ends up just making the platforming imprecise and annoying.
Having said that, I do recommend this game if you're willing to put up with some annoying controls, because it's a fun game that really leans into its aesthetic and that aesthetic is a good one. However, this game, while it looks kid friendly, will likely frustrate a child too much, so it should be reserved for nostalgia seekers only.