CSW Demo

No one says it’s a bad thing to use other games as inspiration for your own creation, especially now when almost everything has been touched and tried already. However, you must at least make the concept somewhat original, in the sense that the game should feel and play differently. Otherwise, you won’t manage to impress anyone with a simple clone.

CSW is inspired by Cave Story, the game that was single-handedly developed by Daisuke Amaya. Hence, it borrows many of its elements, including the theme, a bit of the story and the general setting. The goal is also the same, although the game at hand is barely in the project phase and you can't even call it playable, given the lack of content and the crude gameplay.

The story is practically non-existent as of right now, but the main character does look a bit familiar and even reminiscent of the one from Cave Story. As such, whether he has amnesia as well is not yet a known fact, although he does seem to be lost in a system of caves from where he must get out. Various monsters try to stop him from doing so, but they are powerless in front of a hero with infinite health.

Although the foes are not functional and they cannot harm you, you can still use your gun to destroy them. To do so, all you have to do is calculate their route and unleash a burst of bullets. As you manage to kill more, the weapons get better and better, until you are able to afford more powerful ammunition. On the other hand, only the level one gun works on the enemies, because the other ones have yet to be implemented.

From a visual point of view, the game does actually look pretty good, even if the levels are a bit narrow and they can induce a bit of claustrophobia in the audience. The textures are nice, and you can tell that quite a bit of work went into the animations, regardless of the small resolution and the low bit depth. Sadly, there is no soundtrack and only a few sound effects for the guns.

In the end, CSW is way too empty to justify a demo when a few screenshots would have sufficed. Hence, the “game” lacks content and it can barely classify as interactive, which is a shame, considering the fact that it has some potential.