[Famicompendium] Cave Noire

Okay, so I know that I teased that I’d be writing about a different game in the last column (which was posted five months ago, holy crap) but there’s a reason for that. Turns out that a game that’s essentially “Style Savvy but also a dating sim” isn’t all that unique when Nintendo ended up adding boyfriends to Style Savvy anyway. So instead I chose to write about one of my favourite Game Boy titles in celebration of the handheld’s 25th anniversary (which was three months ago, holy crap). Yep, that chunky handheld sure gave us plenty of timeless experiences like Link’s Awakening, Mole Mania, and Revenge of the Gator’s title screen, but today I want to focus on a lesser-known classic for Nintendo’s monochromatic machine, an early Japanese dungeon crawler called Cave Noire published by Konami way back in 1991.

The label “roguelike’ is thrown around a lot lately, now broadly referring to any game with RPG-style progression, randomly generated environments and the unforgiving potential of perma-death. Is Spelunky a roguelike? I guess so. How about Faster Than Light? Sure, why not. What’s a “Berlin Interpretation”? Doesn’t matter. The roguelike may have started out with the ultra-hardcore dungeon crawls of Rogue and other similar PC games (hence the label), but has gradually given rise to more diverse takes on the genre. Cave Noire might not be be the first roguelike on a handheld game console, but it stands out as one of the first roguelikes to take advantage of the device’s “pick up and play” format and shift to a more accessible experience. It’s also far better than Dragon Crystal on the Sega Game Gear. Chunsoft’s eventual “Mystery Dungeon” series may have become a more popular and influential Japanese take on the roguelike, but Cave Noire remains an interesting, experimental look at a more casual direction that the genre could have taken. It’s really more of a “rogue-lite”.

While most roguelikes revolve around a single, multi-floored dungeon, Cave Noire presents players with several different journeys. As a heroic adventurer, your male or female protagonist receives quests from the local guild, which are divided into four distinct gameplay modes. One style of quest has you killing a set number of monsters found in the randomly-generated cave, while others focus on collecting gold, orbs or rescuing fairies. Cave Noire maintains the fundamentals of the roguelike genre with turn-based movement across a seemingly limitless number of floors, but these dungeon dives tend to be short journeys – quests rarely last longer than ten minutes. Despite the simplicity, Cave Noire’s quests quickly increase in difficulty, throwing in plenty of unpredictable elements like unstable floors, teleporters and hidden passages. Objectives are varied and challenging enough to remain compelling, and Cave Noire definitely possesses a certain addictive quality; it’s easy to jump back into another quest even after being murdered by minotaurs or falling into a pit of lava.

Cave Noire is also interesting in the way it encourages players to avoid combat. Even with the few equipment upgrades available, your adventurer is considerably weak, meaning that drawing your sword against the menagerie of monsters that inhabit the dungeons will quickly put an end to your quest. Thankfully, everything from the towering cyclopses to the giant enemy crabs generally move around in set paths, making them relatively easy to dodge. Enemies occasionally drop items, but there are no experience points. Instead, your adventurer’s strength is determined entirely by the items found while exploring. There are a handful of random items given out at the start of each quest (by a tree, because why not) and using this assortment of potions, torches and magic spells is the only way to escape from the dungeon unscathed. Because items aren’t kept after each quest, the game really encourages players to use everything at their disposal – although careful planning is still a must as treasure chests are hard to come by. Breaking up the roguelike experience into small chunks mean that Cave Noire avoids the usual problem of players losing all the items they’ve been hoarding and makes it easy to jump back into the action with minimal losses. This alleviates some of the frustration with roguelikes while retaining some level of tension; there’s plenty of challenge in seeing how far you can get with the tools given.

There’s not a whole lot of information out there about the production of Cave Noire, except that it was handled by a tiny development team. The game was designed by programmer Kazuo Iwasaki, who went on to handle the Power Pro Kun baseball sim series. The two games couldn’t be more different, though, and Cave Noire remains the only roguelike developed by Konami. Azure Dreams on the Playstation doesn’t count because it’s a dating sim in my eyes. Cave Noire might not be influential , but I’m surprised that other portable roguelikes haven’t borrowed from its structure since it’s perfectly suited to handheld consoles or mobile devices. I try to write a lengthy analysis with these Famicompendium posts, but for Cave Noire I want to keep it brief. It’s an elegant interpretation of the genre that may be too simplified for some, but retains the sense of mystery and tension that roguelikes are renowned for. And for an early Game Boy game it’s pretty impressive, boasting charming graphics and a great soundtrack by Shinji Tasaka. I can’t imagine anyone reading this is really in the market for a monochromatic dungeon crawler, but Cave Noire is still well worth checking out.

Import Friendliness: Very high

There’s an English translation patch by Aeon Genesis, though I haven’t used it; Cave Noire is such a simple, visual game that it isn’t really necessary. Strangely, Konami have yet to publish the game on the 3DS’s Virtual Console, instead opting to sell more forgettable entries in their back catalogue like Quarth. Has anybody seen Quarth? Because of the lack of any modern rerelease, your only option to play Cave Noire legally is to track down the cartridge; it shouldn’t set you back too much, though, since I found a boxed copy for about eight dollars.

Next time on Famicompendium I’ll be taking a look at a super long-running RPG series that never really took off outside of Japan. Hopefully I won’t end up delaying it for five months again.