Crystal Caves (1991)

Name:Crystal Caves
Number:231
Year:1991
Publisher:Apogee
Developer:Apogee
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:4/5
Time:6 hours 50 minutes
Won:Yes (101W/73L)

My experience with Crystal Caves is a bit of an odd one, I never played it back in the day, instead, I ended up playing it years later when I felt like going through more of Apogee's catalog. I don't know why I went on this one, since I thought before that it wasn't actually a shooter of any sort, just a side-scroller where you collect things. So I was surprised to find out that it was using the same design as Secret Agent from the following year.

The story is, Mylo Steamwitz is a low-life space trader interested in making a quick coin and not much else. Something which isn't working out in his favor, because he's currently being pursued by creditors. He's also somewhat dim, since he tried to sell blood stones to vampires. His current scheme is to head to the Altairian star system in order to mine their crystals to get enough cash for a Twibble farm. Which seems odd, considering that this is his objective, yet he objects to working on his uncle's farm. Apparently they are the rage right now, but chances are by the time he finishes mining there will be little point. I get the feeling that Mylo is the epitome of the expression "How do you make a small fortune? You start with a large fortune."

The hub level of Episode 1.

Your objective, thus, is to collect all the crystals in each level in the game. There are the usual controls, arrows to move, ctrl shoots, alt jumps and oddly enough, interacts with objects. That won't be annoying. Some enemies die in one shot, others multiple and a few require a limited time item to kill. The gun is weird, one shot on-screen only and it accelerates as it stays on-screen, starting slow and quickly shooting across the screen. There are colored doors, which instead of a key, you just flip a switch. The game refers to Mylo's health as lives, but it's clear that it's hits. You may restart a level an infinite amount of times.

Crystal Caves works differently than most Apogee games we've seen so far. There's a hub level and then you pretty much have free access to all the levels from this one. Also, sometimes fruit appears here, which you can get for score/money. Apparently a strawberry costs $5000 in whatever year this is. Inflation's pretty bad in the future. It takes about 100 crystals to equal a strawberry, so maybe this wasn't Mylo's best idea.

To the left, a wall gun, with the switch that turns it off also visible. There are hidden spikes at the bottom. The glass blocks are shootable, while those 8-pointed stars are just background scenery.

First level I play starts the player off under fire. Nice. Still this is as good an introduction as any. The game is not afraid to force you to jump to pull a switch, which I'm sure will be made tricky later. You get your usual traps, guns on the side, hidden spikes, hidden things in the walls, and falling spikes. The usual shootable block walls. Enemies are more interesting. There's a spider that goes up and down which shoots webs at you. Some sort of flying worm which goes in a random direction when it hits a wall. So in order to kill that, you have to be in such a place that you can shoot it without it dodging. There's also a minecart, stays in one place, then drives to the other side of the platform it's on. Can't kill it without the special gun pill.

The robots are about to get Mylo, he simply hasn't any hope of escape.

Another one where the player is under threat and a lot more interesting objects. To start with, there are chests which you need to find a key to open. Just one key and they will all pop open. You can also jump up, but not down these platforms. You better believe the level works around that. Then we have more enemies. Robots, which have very odd behavior, they can't be shot if they can attack you, but they'll turn around if you shoot them sometimes. I don't understand quite how it works. Some sort of invincible monster that looks like it came out of a Keen game. A T.Rex lookalike which chases after you if you shoot it. Then some thing walking around quite randomly which can be shot.

This doesn't look very much like a cave...maybe a hill in front of a castle.

This level has snakes, which are annoying because their corpses can hurt you. It's a low gravity level, that means shooting pushes you back. To top it off, there are green mushrooms on this level which kill you instantly. So most of this level is just waiting past the snakes, no point in shooting something that'll hurt you anyway. Like Duke Nukem before it, there's signs that this game is trying to push the limits of your jumping distance but because of the way the engine works, it isn't that annoying. Yet.

I know it's game logic, but I'd prefer that the magic gun pill just gave you a limited number of magic shots rather than be on a timer.

Lemmings pillars? Four new enemies here, a thing under a rock you have to use the pill to kill; A triceratops which shoots fireballs; A rolling ball which is immune unless it's sleeping and also shoots fireballs; And a pair of eyes that just floats around. All of them are set up so that they're easy to avoid. The pill is near both rocks. The ball is at the bottom of a pit you can easily get out of. The triceratops isn't even somewhere you need to be. That oddly, was the only one that killed me...because I shot the oxygen machine behind it. I forgot doing that killed you.

Are there bats here? You'll never know until it's too late.

This one has a few mean tricks up its sleeve, like black bats against a black background and having to go a long way if you fall down. I did learn that you can actually kill those eye monsters. You have to shoot the eyes while they're open, then you can take out the central body.

In particular, this bird is of no trouble lest you unwisely rush in.

Two new enemies on this level. There's a bird which lays eggs which spawns more of itself. Obviously owing to how that works, usually the ones they spawn aren't in too good a shape. Then there are centipede enemies. You know the kind, shoot the head, the next piece becomes the head and so forth until it dies. Otherwise, there's a gravity pill which reverses gravity. It's mostly typical, albeit the optimal path requires some back and forth.

The purple mushrooms are just scenery, as well as those purple rope things.

I like this mushroom forest level. Note the green grass and note that the spikes are green. In general, I notice I've been getting hit the most by spikes I keep missing. This level takes it to an artform. Even better, there are other nasty little things hiding from you, like flame shooting out of a pipe or spiders in tight corners. It also feels cruel because there are some mundane rocks (which look like the enemies) and spikes which don't fall. By actually not being cruel it seems just as cruel. If this were Arctic Adventure, I would hate this, but between the better movement and having hit points, it's a lot easier to both survive and dodge such situations.

The oil drums are things you can walk on, not something dangerous.

Ah, something annoying, gun above, tied to the switch on the right, and pipe dropping the usual liquid that hurts you. Now's a good time to mention that Mylo is well-animated. He's got a nice little charm to him despite being presumably as dumb as a sack of rocks. That animation also applies to his death sequences. They're nice, not adventure game nice, but still nice. Unfortunately, they're unskippable and kind of long.

Something could be out to kill Mylo right now and I could never see it!

Then there's a level, where after getting unpinned by a T.Rex, you have to make your way through a shootable block maze. It's actually quite annoying. Because it's quite possible to screw yourself in such a way that you won't realize it for a while. The way bats pop up here makes it difficult to get out unscathed. Those black enemies on a black background are tripping me up.

This level is clearly a crystal lab, not a cave.

This level looks simple, but on the lower right, you have a robot that it is quite tricky to get safe shots at. If you go to those crystals the direct way, you will get hit. Finally, the danger sign will fall down if you're under it, and the blue door requires a lever found elsewhere. Once you get past that, it's one act of dodging water drips after another.

Reverse gravity levels feels like a cheap way to use assets in different ways without an easier way to place them all the opposite side of the block.

Levels with reverse gravity for the entire time are a bit tricky, but not for the reason you might think. Because the hidden spikes are all on the top side of the block, where you walk with normal gravity. Walking on the ceiling can blind you to this. And there's the usual collect letters to get a bonus thing, which I didn't notice until now because I didn't realize they were inside the eggs. I assumed they were random collectibles, like the pickaxe.

"My flashlight does nothing!"

The last two levels I reached each had a new gimmick. One was just in the dark until you found the light switch. Though it did have other ways of screwing you over, like a section where if you don't find a switch to the moving platforms or the doors first, you end up trapped. The other had constantly falling rocks. It wasn't that annoying, but I would say that I probably got lucky there.

Mylo really just goes everywhere wearing a mining helmet, huh?

The episode ends with Mylo getting exactly what he wanted, the Twibble farm. Of course, they're explosive breeders and the fad is dead. So now he has a planet full of the things, which of course, is dying thanks to Mylo's lack of foresight. So he decides to leave the planet he has completely ruined and get some more crystals. Episode 2 starts with him selling his Twibble farm and deciding that he should buy himself an Organian Slug farm because they're needed for medicinal purposes thanks to a war. Can Mylo destroy two planets?

The gems change appearance between episodes, which I guess is neat.

The first level I play in this episode turns out to be quite tricky. Starting off in darkness and in a situation where you're about to get attacked by the birds. This is especially tricky owing to this being the start, and the ammo factor of Mylo's gun, which will probably never come up again after this, actually matters. This doesn't really improve as you go through the level, since you constantly have to go up so the birds don't have free reign over you. And of course, in order to do so, you have to make a lot of long jumps, onto moving platforms which you often have to jump on and off so you aren't knocked off by some standing block.

I wonder if the design of the crushers is a joke or a miscommunication?

And the second continues my troubles. To start with, you have to jump over poisonous mushrooms, bit trickier than just one, to grab a stop sign at the right moment so you don't get killed by that hammer. And then there's a group of shootable blocks you have to climb up. I see we're getting some of Broussard's evil nature back.

Welcome to crystal...construction zone.

Acid pits, lovely. A pattern emerges regarding level design, throw the player over some dangerous location and put in a ton of blocks you can get caught on. There's still that pesky block-based collision detection going on, at least in some places. Still, it's a lot less difficult and a lot more time-consuming, which is a positive for the worst part of Apogee's level design.

I was so concerned about this level I didn't even take a proper screenshot!

This one is hard to explain, the real threat here is nothing you would expect. Oh, sure, there are the surprisingly difficult birds and bats, but the real threat are those green things and the snakes. Remember, those create corpses when they die that still hurt you. They also take multiple shots and stop sometimes for no reason. There are multiple sections here where you have to get past two in tight quarters.

Yes, the spider blends against the cave wall, but that's not noticeable in motion.

A gun on you at the start, falling rocks and the only way out is by bumping into some invisible blocks. This isn't difficult per say, just tedious, because you have to slowly go up, step on a moving platform over an acid pit, go down a long jump, then open a door and activate another moving platform, wait for it to come down, then repeat with two more doors and then you can go out. On the bright side, the game won't drop a stone on you if you're near the top of the screen.

I don't know if this is the right screenshot, but look, Keen's helmet!

Oh, wow, it's another one of those long and tedious levels. I'm starting to regret mocking previous games for not being consistent with their difficulty, because this is getting on my nerves. You basically get no shots out of this level, there are a bunch of enemies you need to kill in the right way or else on the way back...through the entire level, you will deal with them twice. Oh, and to top it all off, the beginning/end is a moving platform ride over an acid pit, and you need to jump on top of non-moving platforms in order to not die...without any leeway whatsoever.

Oh, wow, it's another one of those long and tedious levels. I'm starting to regret mocking previous games for not being consistent with their difficulty, because this is getting on my nerves. You basically get no shots out of this level, there are a bunch of enemies you need to kill in the right way or else on the way back...through the entire level, you will deal with them twice. Oh, and to top it all off, the beginning/end is a moving platform ride over an acid pit, and you need to jump on top of non-moving platforms in order to not die...without any leeway whatsoever.

The crystal above Mylo right now might genuinely be the hardest one to get, I'm not joking.

This one is annoying, but not too difficult. You have to avoid a ton of enemies that you either can't kill or leave deadly corpses behind. Either way, you can't win. To add insult to injury, there's a pistol pill at the top, where it does the least amount of good, the unkillable enemies are all towards the bottom. And it doesn't help that so many crystals are placed in such a way that reaching them is very tricky. One particular one was so tricky I wasn't sure it was possible to take.

I'm impressed someone managed to put so much "it is what it is" into one EGA image.

After finishing Episode 2, Mylo's scheme actually works out...until the slugs bury themselves underground and hit a salt deposit, resulting in all their deaths. I'm not surprised. I'm really not. Episode 3 starts with Mylo now resolved to get into...real estate. What could possibly go wrong?

The hint is that the items are on top of invisible blocks.

Have you ever wanted to go through a level consisting almost entirely of invisible blocks you need to bump into to be able to walk on? Good news. Unfortunately for me, I didn't. I actually had to come back to this level, because shockingly, I needed more ammo for this one than I had by this point. Though frankly even with the starting number of five shots it was kind of tricky. Though by now I'm going for the egg bonuses simply because I don't want Mylo to completely suffer.

You can go right where the rock monster is, or you can go for the gravity pill. That's it.

Speaking of tedium, there's a level that proves the game was avoiding making the player jump at the very limit of their ability, because this one requires it. The annoying bit is that despite Mylo not being that fast, it seems like it's a bit trickier than most games to successfully pull off. So much so that I restarted the level because I didn't realize I could do that and thought I did something wrong with the first gravity pill you get. This is a jump to get the second, there's no other way to win this level.

I probably should be more annoyed by the constant breaking of that "can't get killed by an enemy at the start" rule I have.

This. Freaking. Level. To start with, you are right next to a spike and one of the rock monsters. You have a few seconds to jump away. Your safe platform isn't safe, it has a snake on it. The left path is to a spike...and another rock monster anyway. To the right is the safest. This is the beginning of this level's annoyance, because there are a significant number of platforms you have no way of getting past without a power pill. Which is far away. I didn't mention it, but the pills are on timers. The power pill has one for 15 seconds. This is the first time it's been such a big problem. Even with it, it's still impossible to beat this level without getting hit at least once. Getting it right was tense because I did not want to have to do things so precisely again.

You can't jump up from here, instead you have to jump to that block in the middle, then left, and of course, right again. While dodging water drops.

The funny thing is that right after this I played the easiest level in this episode. The jump in the screenshot is the only difficult thing here. Otherwise it's just some nice, pleasant smooth sailing, including a section where you can either shoot or jump over a dinosaur at your leisure. Apogee's gotten good enough at balancing where these levels end up that I suspect this is an intentional choice.

I'm screwed in this screenshot, I have no way out of this area, the platform isn't moving.

This one has an egregious way of forcing the player to do things in a certain way. To start with, you're on a ledge with a snake, and below you is one of those ball enemies. Good thing you can't start this level first. Then you have the level divided into two halves, a top and bottom half, in which you can only get to the top via a gravity pill. Even at the top there are two areas where if you don't do things right, you're stuck in that area.

Skipping over another one like that, we get a reverse gravity level...also like that. This one feels clever because you're doing things in a different way than usual, like using a gravity pill so you don't have to jump over falling spikes or walk above one of those crushers. It's weird how a simple trick like that can improve what would otherwise be an annoying level.

In the upper left corner of the main level, there's a section that you can't get out of. Oddly, these are some of the easier levels in this episode. This is fixed in the HD remake, but that's not the one I own. So instead, they're the ones you'll end the episode on here. Easing one out, which seems to be a theme with Apogee titles so far.

I guess the green planet wasn't a gas giant...

The episode ends with Mylo flying back to the trading post so he can buy himself a solar system. The man Mylo is buying it off of is suspiciously eager to sell it to Mylo, and forces him through the signing of the contract. After he goes off, the star explodes into a nebula. Mylo is ruined...or is he? The text cuts to a few months later where Mylo has built a burger joint. Where two burgers, two fires and two malts costs $60, which isn't too bad considering current inflation. And so, Mylo ends the game in pretty good shape.

Despite some issues, Crystal Caves is a pretty solid game. As the levels go on, there's a real problem where there's a single solution to the level and doing anything else results in death or an unwinnable situation. Some of the ones I didn't mention just fall into this pattern, while others are solid but unremarkable. Bad sticks in your memory more. Most levels are short enough that you can easily just pick up and play a few if you need to pass the time.

As such it falls into that category of game where if you want something meaty, you aren't going to find it here. But in it's goal of being a simple little platformer, it doesn't leave a lot to be desired. With that, let's get to the rating.

Weapons:
I like how the projectile speeds up as it goes on-screen, but ammo feels like busywork and the low-gravity levels are more annoying than a clever trick. 1/10

Enemies:
Could have used more as the game goes on, rather than putting them all in the shareware episode, but there's a nice variety. 5/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Even in the worst case, a level isn't going to take you more than half a hour. Most levels are fun and quick to beat, so the good outweighs the bad. 5/10

Player Agency:
As I said the shoot button, the button to activate switches/levers being the same button is annoying, but it turned out to be because the game exploits that bit to place enemies in places where you can't shoot them because of a lever. Otherwise I only wish you had control over the height of the jump. 6/10

Interactivity:
Not as interesting as Duke, but we still have some minor item messing about compared to your usual game. Not sure I could the oxygen machine you can shoot and kill yourself with as a positive either. 2/10

Atmosphere:
Solid as a sci-fi spoof and as a platformer, but doesn't really stick out in either regard. 4/10

Graphics:
Simple but effective. Most importantly, I can see whoever's doing the animation has improved, Mylo has a lot of neat animations. My least favorite part is actually the big graphics, Mylo always looks weird as opposed to the Duke-esque hero he is in-game. 4/10

Story:
As weird as it is to say, I liked it even if it was basic. I know Mylo's victory is going to be short-lived, but it was nice to see him win if for a moment. 2/10

Sound/Music:
Basic but inoffensive PC Speaker sound effect. 2/10

That's 31, Apogee's best in-house effort yet.

Nothing else, really, to say about this one. As I mentioned, there was a remake a few years back, which also adds in another episode. I imagine what I said about this game will also be true about that one, albeit with nicer graphics.

Apogee would try this style of game one more time with Secret Agent, before going entirely with big levels and usually a Keen-style of graphics. Based on what I've gleamed online, people liked this one, but didn't care for Secret Agent, no doubt an influence in the choice. As to what I'll be covering next, I think I'll take a detour from the finish line of 1992 and play another Tomb Raider mod.