Cave Story



Cave Story (Doukutsu Monogatari) is a freeware PC game made by the Japanese author Pixel. Full of high-detail pixel art reminiscent of a SNES game, you follow the adventures of an amnesia-riddled robot as he wanders through cave after cave, finding new weapons to upgrade, and finding new friends as well. Because of how story driven the game becomes, there's three possible endings; you'll just have to find them all.

Story
There are two sections: Basic, and Spoiler. The plot-heavy section has been marked off by the two spoiler tags below. If you don't want the plot ruined, don't read between them.

Basic
In the beginning, you start out in a cave. You don't know who you are, or how you got there. However, you decide to venture out of the room. After getting your first weapon, the Polar Star, you manage to escape the first cave you were located in, and land in a village called Mimiga Village. It consists of rabbit-like creatures called the Mimiga, who are under the rule of a man who calls himself "The Doctor". Apparently, a new Mimiga named Sue has surfaced in the village that the denizens had never met before, and fear that they may be punished for her presence. After having locked herself up in the house of a now-deceased Mimiga called Arthur, you venture in to find her.

Spoiler-Heavy
Please be warned right now that this section contains plot details from the super-secret ending. This final warning is being issued in case you do not want any of the extended plot told to you.

A few thousand years ago, there was a witch named Jenka who had a brother named Ballos. Ballos was a powerful wizard, and was loved by all the villagers. However, the king of the land was jealous of the villagers loving Ballos more than himself, and had Ballos locked up. Ballos was tortured on-end by the castle guards, until one day, he snapped. In a blaze of magic, the king was enveloped in Ballos' energy and was destroyed. However, Ballos could not control his powers and his fury went on to destroy the kingdom that had loved him so much, and his wife and children.

Jenka saw the rage that Ballos couldn't control, and, not having the heart to kill her own brother, instead imprisoned him in a floating island so that he would never harm others. Misery, Jenka's daughter, had other plans for Ballos. She managed to convince the imprisoned wizard to create the Demon Crown, a crown that would grant its wearer the same powers Ballos had. However, Misery was subsequently cursed by the crown, and was forced to do the bidding of whomever wore it unless it were to be destroyed. Over the years, many had gone to the island, and every single time, the wearer loses control of the power and proceeds to destroy themselves in the process.

Fast forward a few thousand years. The world's governments had just received information of a crown that would grant its wearer whatever they desired. All they had to do was retrieve it from the floating isle it resided on. Each government sent robot armies to the island to retrieve the crown for their own personal gain, whereas two more robots, made by an unknown source, were sent to do the opposite of the armies; to destroy the crown. These two robots were named Curly Brace and Quote. The robot armies were, however, met with resistance. Mimigas, small, cute rabbit-like creatures that live on the island had ingested a flower known as the demon flower. Red in color, it caused the Mimigas to turn into feral beasts that quickly wiped out the vast legions of robots. After Quote and Curly's confrontation with the current crown holder, they were knocked unconscious.

A while later, Quote wakes, with no recollection of who he is, or where he is. All he knows is that he has to get out.

Trivia

 * Cave Story took five years to make, including programming, art, and music. It was finally completed in December, 2004.
 * One month after it was completed, Aeon Genesis, a group of translators, rewrote the game's script into English, making the game appeal to a much, much wider audience.
 * The game has three endings.
 * Pixel made his own music format for the game, called Organya. A program comes with Cave Story, called OrgView, which plays all of the BGMs in the game. However, if you hunt down Organya Maker (which can be found on the unofficial file board, and was also created by Pixel), you may find six extra sounds included.