Info about Caves of Lore:

Official game description:
  
**MY JOURNEY MAKING THIS GAME**  
I'm a self-taught solo-dev who built this passion project over 6 years while holding down a full time job and raising a family. I dedicated myself to work 5 minutes a day no matter what, and built the game piece by piece, not really knowing where I was going or how it would all end.  
**CAVES OF LORE**  
*   Caves of Lore is a turn-based, pixel-art, fantasy CRPG that combines elements of environmental exploration and character interaction with tactical, grid-based combat.
*   Fun and weird adventures await as you progress through a world full of monsters and humor. Hidden secrets and strange powers abound, allowing for a highly customizable party. Vast amounts of loot and treasure constantly increase your power, while dialogue, books and lore are waiting for those who want to be drawn into the world further.
*   Dark themes and ancient horrors don’t keep this game from remaining upbeat and funny, with a story that unfolds in unexpected ways. Tactical combat, endless magical item combos, and a vast array of spells, abilities and traits make for great replay value.
*   6 character capacity party, 65+ spells, 65+ abilities, 65+ traits, 50+ monsters, 40+ NPCs , 30+ quests, and 20+ areas to explore. Hundreds of items and tens of thousands of enchantment combinations make for all manner of powerful items.

Release date: 21 Jan, 2023

Categories: Turn-based Combat, RPG, Dungeon Crawler, Exploration, Character Customization, Party-based Combat, Crafting, Puzzle Solving


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Deep, Unique, and Engaging Gameplay (weight 0.91): Players consistently praise the game's depth, unique mechanics, and engaging design. It offers a challenging yet user-friendly experience, full of creative ideas and rewarding exploration without excessive hand-holding. The game feels both old-school and modern, captivating players from the start.
- Impressive Solo Developer Achievement (weight 0.88): The game is widely lauded as an exceptional achievement for a solo developer. Players are amazed by the depth, detail, and quality, often comparing it favorably to AAA titles. The developer's passion, responsiveness, and continuous updates are highly appreciated, contributing to a largely bug-free and evolving experience.
- Classic CRPG Experience with Modern Touches (weight 0.68): The game successfully captures the essence of old-school CRPGs from the 80s and 90s, offering party-based dungeon crawling, tactical combat, and deep character building. It blends nostalgic elements with quality-of-life improvements, appealing to veteran RPG players seeking a classic yet refined experience.
- Rich Exploration and Lore (weight 0.64): The game excels in exploration, offering a world brimming with secrets, mysteries, and deep lore. Players enjoy uncovering hidden pathways, solving riddles, and piecing together the world's history, which often ties into gameplay. This non-linear discovery process provides a genuine sense of accomplishment.
- Rewarding Spell and Skill Systems (weight 0.41): The game features an innovative and satisfying spell system where spells are learned through use and can be permanently memorized. The 'learn-by-doing' skill progression allows for flexible character development and powerful builds, encouraging experimentation and rewarding player investment.
- Solid and Dynamic Turn-Based Combat (weight 0.37): The turn-based combat system is praised for its depth, variety, and tactical engagement. It offers dynamic encounters where players must think strategically, with well-animated actions and diverse enemy types, making each battle feel rewarding.
- Charming Pixel Art and Atmosphere (weight 0.3): The game's pixel art style is consistently praised for being beautiful, charming, and effective. It contributes to a unique and atmospheric old-school vibe, with detailed character and environment designs that are easy to read and visually appealing.
- Flexible Character Customization (weight 0.23): The game offers deep and flexible character customization, allowing players to build and specialize their characters in various ways. The classless system and abundant options for stats and abilities provide significant freedom in character development.
- Abundant and Rewarding Secrets (weight 0.23): The game is filled with numerous well-designed secrets, including hidden areas and surprises. Players enjoy the challenge of discovering these secrets, which often require keen observation and puzzle-solving, providing a strong sense of accomplishment and unique rewards.
- Minimal Bugs and Technical Issues (weight 0.12): Players report a largely bug-free experience, with very few game-breaking issues. Any minor bugs encountered are often quickly resolved by the highly responsive developer, contributing to a smooth and enjoyable gameplay experience.
- Robust Crafting and Enchanting Systems (weight 0.11): The game includes well-implemented crafting and enchanting systems that encourage player interaction. The enchanting system, in particular, allows for deep item customization by enabling players to transfer and stack enchantments, leading to powerful gear.
- Personal Enjoyment and Nostalgia (weight 0.1): Many players express a strong personal connection to the game, finding it delightful, quirky, and nostalgic. It resonates with their preferences, offering a unique world view and providing a highly enjoyable experience.

Common complaints:
- Excessive and Repetitive Combat (weight 0.82): The game suffers from an overwhelming number of combat encounters, often feeling like filler and becoming a tedious grind. Many battles are trivial, repetitive, and lack challenge, especially in the mid to late game, making progression feel like a chore.
- Poor User Interface and Experience (weight 0.77): The UI is consistently criticized for being clunky, confusing, and unintuitive, especially with a controller. Players struggle with messy layouts, lack of clear information, and poor menu navigation, significantly hindering the overall user experience.
- Unsatisfying and Abrupt Ending (weight 0.63): The game's story concludes abruptly, often with a blatant cliffhanger designed for a sequel rather than a satisfying resolution. This leaves many players feeling disappointed and unfulfilled by the narrative's conclusion.
- Unpolished and Lacking Content (weight 0.59): Many players felt the game was released prematurely, resembling an early access or beta version. It lacks depth, polish, and sufficient content, leading to a feeling of incompleteness and a rapid drop-off in engagement after the initial hours.
- Flat Characters and NPC Interactions (weight 0.54): Player characters and companions lack personality and depth, with limited interaction options. NPCs often feel unnecessary, have annoying routines, and provide repetitive or unhelpful dialogue, making the world feel less engaging.
- Numerous Bugs and Technical Issues (weight 0.49): The game is plagued by various bugs, ranging from minor visual glitches to game-breaking issues like soft locks during combat and frequent crashes. These technical problems severely disrupt gameplay and force players to restart or lose progress.
- Frustrating Puzzles and Mechanics (weight 0.25): Several puzzles, particularly those involving moon phases, are criticized for being tedious and requiring long periods of waiting. Other critical path elements are obscure, missable, or poorly explained, leading to player frustration and reliance on external guides.
- Tedious and Unclear Quests (weight 0.19): Quests are often uninspired, repetitive fetch or kill tasks, and their objectives are frequently unclear or poorly hinted at. This forces players to spend excessive time figuring out what to do, detracting from enjoyment.
- Underwhelming Abilities and Traits (weight 0.16): Many abilities, skills, and traits are deemed weak, useless, or redundant, making combat less strategic and encouraging players to stick to a few effective options. Unlocking new traits often involves monotonous grinding.
- Dated and Inconsistent Graphics (weight 0.15): The game's graphics are considered a drawback, with pixel art that doesn't impress and a color palette that sometimes clashes. While serviceable, the visual presentation is not a strong point.
- Unengaging Lore System (weight 0.05): The lore system, particularly for monsters, is seen as pointless and not worth the effort of reading. While some lore is well-written, the sheer volume and lack of clear importance make it a chore to engage with.

Gameplay feedback:
- Engaging Turn-Based Combat (weight 0.66): The game offers challenging and tactical turn-based combat on a grid, reminiscent of old-school JRPGs but with more dynamic elements. Players manage a party of up to six characters, utilizing a wide array of spells, abilities, and gear. Combat is described as quick, engaging, and deep, though it can become trivial mid-game with optimized builds.
- Rich Party-Based RPG (weight 0.51): Players lead a party of up to six members, starting with one created character and recruiting others throughout the story. These companions are enjoyable, gain unique personalities, and can unlock additional abilities. Dialogue often changes based on the party leader, adding depth to interactions.
- Extensive Exploration & Secrets (weight 0.49): Exploration is a core aspect, filled with numerous secrets, puzzles, and mysteries. These range from simple proximity discoveries to complex environmental gimmicks, often tied to unique skills or the game's three-moon rune system. Finding these secrets is rewarding and encourages careful attention to the environment.
- Deep Character Customization (weight 0.49): Players can create highly customizable characters with a classless system, investing points into attributes and selecting various passive traits. The game supports diverse builds, from melee to summoner, and offers extensive build depth through skills, abilities, traits, and gear with unique stats and bonuses.
- Unique Spell & Skill System (weight 0.46): The game features a unique magic system where spells are learned permanently through repeated use, initially aided by items. This 'learn-by-doing' approach extends to all skills, allowing characters to achieve mastery and independence from specific items. This system offers deep character progression and diverse party builds.
- Intriguing Narrative & Dialogue (weight 0.27): The story is intriguing, combining atmospheric exploration with a 'piece it together' narrative style, similar to Dark Souls. Dialogue is lighthearted, well-written, and uses a keyword system, with NPCs reacting differently based on the party leader. The game starts with the protagonist having amnesia, a central plot point.
- Substantial Content & Playtime (weight 0.22): The game offers a significant amount of content, with playtime ranging from 40-50 hours on normal difficulty to 70-100 hours on the highest. It features numerous quests, challenging secrets, and a detailed world, ensuring a lengthy and engaging experience.
- Adjustable Difficulty & Spawns (weight 0.22): The game offers multiple difficulty levels, with normal difficulty providing a challenging but manageable experience. Players can also adjust monster spawn frequency or disable respawns entirely, allowing for a customized challenge.
- Initial Learning Curve (weight 0.04): Some players noted that the game has a lot of mechanics to take in at first, and some systems may require a little time to get used to.
- Standard Abilities (weight 0.04): Feedback suggests that some abilities in the game are a bit dull and fairly standard, lacking significant variety or innovation.
- Great Artwork (weight 0.03): The game features great artwork and movement, with a pixel-based style that reminds some players of games like Crawl.

Performance notes:
- Smooth initial performance (weight 0.08): Players reported a smooth gameplay experience with no crashes or significant glitches during their initial play sessions. This indicates a stable launch for many users.
- Steam Deck compatibility (weight 0.05): The game appears to run well on the Steam Deck, with one player reporting over 6 hours of play without issues and no need to adjust default Proton settings. This suggests good optimization for the portable platform.
- Slow loading times (weight 0.03): One player noted that the game, despite its pixel art style, experienced surprisingly long loading times. This could impact the overall flow and player experience.

Recommendations:
- Highly Recommended for CRPG Fans (weight 0.77): Players overwhelmingly recommend this game, especially to fans of classic CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Planescape, and Divinity: Original Sin 2. It's seen as a hidden gem that delivers a deep, immersive, old-school dungeon-crawling experience with tactical, turn-based combat.
- Excellent Value for Money (weight 0.27): Many players feel the game is well worth its price, even at full cost, citing its quality, fun factor, and the significant amount of gameplay hours it offers. It's considered a steal and a great investment for entertainment.
- Caution for Early Adopters (weight 0.17): Some players advise caution for those sensitive to crashes, visual glitches, or who prefer a more polished experience. They recommend saving often and suggest waiting a few weeks or months for potential improvements.
- Support the Solo Developer (weight 0.16): Players express strong support for the game's sole developer, Red Plume LLC, hoping for its success and encouraging others to purchase and review the game to help it gain more visibility and attention.
- Not for Everyone (weight 0.11): A minority of players did not enjoy the game, citing boring questlines, elementary design flaws, or a lack of appeal for those not accustomed to reading-heavy, old-school RPGs with pixel art graphics.
- Potential for Future Content (weight 0.07): Many players are excited about the game's future, expressing hopes for a sequel and looking forward to more games from the developer. They believe the developer has great potential for future additions to the genre.
- Suggests Feature Additions (weight 0.02): One player suggested that the game could be improved with the addition of character appearance changes and modding support, indicating areas for potential future development.
- Minor Cons Are Resource-Related (weight 0.02): One reviewer noted that the game's listed 'cons' are not fundamental design flaws but rather issues that could be addressed with more resources for content and playtesting.
- Recommends Reading Books (weight 0.02): One piece of feedback, though isolated, suggests reading the books, which might imply a rich lore or narrative component to the game.

Other player notes:
- Impressive Solo Developer Effort (weight 0.21): Players are highly impressed by the game's quality, given it was developed by a single person, often in their spare time. This highlights the dedication and passion behind the project.
- Responsive Developer Support (weight 0.2): The developer is praised for being extremely active, friendly, and responsive to player feedback and bug reports. They frequently update and patch the game, often multiple times a day, without breaking save files.
- UI/UX Improvement Suggestions (weight 0.14): Players have provided specific suggestions for improving the user interface, particularly regarding inventory management with tabs and sorting options, and quick casting for spells/abilities.
- Minor Technical/Content Notes (weight 0.07): Observations include the game's compatibility with translation tools, unique world-building elements like three moons, serviceable writing, and the lack of utility for picked-up containers.
- Affordable Price Point (weight 0.07): Players note the game's low price, with some feeling it is unfairly cheap given the content and effort, suggesting it offers excellent value.
- Positive Ancillary Features (weight 0.07): Players appreciate specific elements like the wonderful music, the comforting dog character, and the game's overall presentation as a tactical RPG.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.3): Players feel satisfied by the game's comprehensive and high-quality RPG experience, including deep combat, engaging exploration, rich lore, and effective character progression. The game's unique blend of classic RPG elements with modern conveniences, along with its overall polish and 'heart,' contributes significantly to this feeling, especially given it's often a solo project.
- Frustration (weight 0.13): Frustration stems primarily from game-breaking bugs, tedious questlines, and a user-unfriendly interface. Players also experience frustration due to repetitive and unbalanced combat, unclear progression, and poorly explained game mechanics, which hinder their overall experience.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.09): Enjoyment is driven by the overall fun gameplay experience, including engaging combat, intriguing story, and the thrill of discovering secrets and lore. The game's depth, humor, and variety of activities also contribute to players having a blast.
- Excitement (weight 0.08): Players feel excitement from discovering the game as a 'hidden gem' and being captivated by its unique mechanics, deep world, and engaging combat. The anticipation of further exploration and story progression, along with the challenge of higher difficulties, fuels this emotion.
- Appreciation (weight 0.07): Appreciation is largely directed towards the solo developer's hard work, passion, and responsiveness in fixing bugs and engaging with the community. Players also appreciate the game's high value, beautiful pixel art, and immersive music and story.
- Disappointment (weight 0.07): Disappointment arises when the game fails to meet initial expectations, often due to unpolished aspects, bugs, or a perceived lack of depth in mechanics. Tedious or unbalanced combat, a sudden difficulty spike, and an unsatisfying ending also contribute to this feeling.
- Admiration (weight 0.05): Admiration is specifically for the game's high quality and detail, especially considering it was developed by a single person. The developer's skill, passion, and quick bug-fixing further enhance this admiration.
- Nostalgia (weight 0.03): Nostalgia is triggered by the game's successful evocation of classic, old-school RPG experiences. Players appreciate how the game brings back memories of beloved titles from the 1990s, blending traditional charm with modern design.
- Joy (weight 0.02): Joy is experienced through the game's fun and creative aspects, the depth of its mechanics, and the satisfaction of discovering things independently. The feeling of time flying by while playing indicates a deeply engaging and pleasurable experience.
- Love (weight 0.02): Love for the game is a strong positive emotion driven by its overall high quality and well-implemented features. It signifies a deep affection for the game as a whole.
- Interest (weight 0.01): Interest is sparked by the game's unique mechanics, such as the rune/moon system, and intriguing character interactions. The rich world-building and lore also captivate players, making them want to delve deeper.
- Annoyance (weight 0.01): Annoyance stems from minor quality-of-life issues, such as a cumbersome inventory system or specific UI problems. The cliffhanger ending also contributes to this feeling, leaving players wanting more resolution.
- Impressiveness (weight 0.01): Players are impressed by the game's depth, complexity, and variety of systems, particularly given it was created by a solo developer, often with no prior coding experience. The evident 'love' and effort put into the game's creation also contribute to this impression.
- Desire (weight 0.01): Desire is expressed for additional content, such as DLC or a sequel, and for specific gameplay enhancements like more melee options or visual customization for armor. This indicates a strong wish for the game to expand or improve in certain areas.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Surprise arises from unexpected positive aspects, such as the richness of the combat system, intriguing story twists, and the overall high quality of the game despite its pixel graphics. This suggests the game exceeded initial expectations.
- Anger (weight 0.01): Anger is a strong negative reaction to specific design flaws, such as puzzle mechanics that require tedious waiting, or a general feeling that the game's quality is unacceptable. This indicates a significant dissatisfaction with certain game elements.
- Anticipation (weight 0.01): Anticipation is felt for future content, particularly a sequel, and for the developer's next projects. This indicates a strong positive outlook on the game's future and the developer's work.
- Boredom (weight 0.01): Boredom is caused by repetitive dialogue and a lack of challenge in the late game. This suggests that certain aspects of the game become monotonous or too easy over time.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.01): Enthusiasm is a strong positive feeling for the game, often described as a 'fantastic CRPG dungeon crawler' or an 'unbelievably good' exception to poorly made games. This highlights a high level of excitement and approval.
- Confusion (weight 0): Confusion arises from unclear tutorials and poorly explained game mechanics, leaving players feeling lost or unsure how to progress. This indicates a need for better in-game guidance.}