Cave Lander

Challenging games can always take up a bit of your time if you like to put your skills and patience to the test, but they must be enjoyable at the same time. They must also have some kind of end goal, because it’s no fun at all to put a lot of effort into something for no reward. Thus, it’s not as simple as you might believe to make an arcade game.

Cave Lander is a challenging arcade game in which your goal is to guide a rocket through a variety of tricky levels in order to reach the landing pad and land without sustaining too much damage. The challenge becomes even greater later on when all sorts of obstacles start to make an appearance, since they force you to make risky maneuvers.

In short, the gameplay mechanics are all about engaging the thrusters as smoothly as possible, because there’s nothing else to control anyway. Thus, it takes a while to build thrust, but once you manage to do so, it’s important to let go, otherwise you pick up speed and might hit something else in the process. It takes patience and calm to reach the pad in safety, which can cause frustration.

Speaking of which, everything gets a lot worse once obstacles start becoming more annoying, which includes falling boulders and a variety of other environmental factors. Hence, it’s not enough to keep an even thrust and land as peacefully as possible, because you must also keep an eye out for falling debris and take the necessary measures whenever something comes toward the rocket.

As for the graphics, there’s nothing out of the ordinary to talk about, since the style used is very basic and to the point. The background color remains the same, but the level design changes on a regular basis to make it harder on you. There’s a neat electronic soundtrack playing in the background as well, which should keep you in high spirits.

In the end, Cave Lander is hardly an original game, and it’s about as basic as it can get in every regard. However, it features enough challenging levels to keep you entertained for a while, so it might be worth your time.