Crystal Caves HD

Back in time I loved the game in EGA and was kind of concerned when I read about an "HD remake". In fact the modernisation is done very careful and with love. The core of the game stays intact. I had big FUN playing it again - now with optional music...yeah

tl;dr The game is almost the same as the original with improved graphics, music soundtrack, bonus episode and some extra stuff (level editor and leaderboard) but it plays waaay smother which makes playing it more enjoyable. Good quality for not much money. In general I am not a huge fan of remasters. Most of the time I think of them as not very subtle way to get money from fans. But playing this one - I am really suprised by how this remaster gets it's job done. I bought it after seeing an actual gameplay and frankly I got everything I wanted. The gameplay is as close to the original as it can be, with only a few tweaks that make it more enjoyable. First of all the graphics is upgraded, but you can see it on screenshots so there is no need to describe what you can see, but I must say that it looks almost like original. The textures are more polished and look better, but the spirit of the original stays intact. Secondly everything works much smoother than original and it actually improves gameplay a lot. Kudos for leaving the original sound effects of PC speaker which makes nostalgia hit you much harder than expected. The only downside to me is the music. Not because it is bad, because the tunes are quite catchy, but because they sound a little bit gameboyish to me. Some nice MIDI music would be more in line with a remake of DOS game Regarding the bonus content: - Lever Editor is really functional so you get used to it quite fast (after checking help messages) - Leaderbord is quite empty at the moment. I am in top 100 after completing 5 levels of first episode - There is no community content atthe moment, but since the game was published a few days ago that's understandable - No opinion on bonus episode - will get that after completing it.

In short: This is a GREAT remake that preserves the old touch and I like it very much! I really liked the original game back in the day and spent many hours playing it (it's included too). When I heard that there's a remake I was a little skeptical at first. But when I saw the remastered screenshots comparison I realized that the original game layout and tiles size were actually preserved, while the sprites and artwork got a real upgrade in color depth. There are many remakes for old DOS games out there but not all of them are made with preservation of the pixel-art in mind. This remake does! And the EXTRA is the built-in level editor! The following details may be more technical to some but it's worth mentioning nevertheless: The original 320x200 game resolution which was shown doubled-pixeled (640x400) on monitors back then is now scaled to 1280x800 (4 times bigger from the original), yet the pixels appearance is preserved; meaning that the resampling of the original artwork which also got remastering work in color depth is scaled-up in a nearest-neighbor form, which is without any blur/smooth effect. That said, it's not just resampling - the entire game is actually built in a 1280x800 res (many indie 2D games are built that way nowadays). This means that the sprites movement and the screen scrolling are much smoother since the game engine moves the actual pixels in 1280x800 res and not in 320x200, which gives a nice smooth feel to the moving pixels on the screen. So each resampled pixel (which equals to 4 pixels in 1280x800) is actually moving 1x4 pixels to perform a movement from one resampled pixel to another resampled pixel. Therefore, I find it more modern to play and it's less "jumpy" for the eyes (less head-ache for whomever 320x200 res scrolling that is just resampled on big screens is a problem). In addition, both the main menu's and the in-game pop-up dialogue's text is nice and crisp for the eyes since they're not built in 320x200 but in 1280x800.

I didn't have a PC when this came out and the times when I had access to one I never got to play this, nor even when I finally did get a PC toward the end of the millennium. But it's one of those games I'd always see LGR play whenever he'd test some new (old) system or custom build, and I always thought it looked like a fun, classic platformer. When I saw Clint post a quick pre-release review I knew I had to get it, and so it was a day one purchase for me. The old EGA version was a classic, no doubt, but this "HD" remake is careful not to make it totally modern. The furthest this graphical upgrade takes things is to make it VGA -- clearer, easier-to-read signs, more colours, and an odd but still good addition of a chiptune soundtrack (which can be disabled if you don't want it), which I don't mind at all. But still chunky pixel graphics -- and it still keeps the old PC-speaker sound effects, too, in all their crunchy, square-wave, single-channel glory, which is arguably the second most important thing they needed to preserve after the gameplay, which is also just as true to the original. But on top of that they also added widescreen visuals, and the ability to save your game between levels, as well as added an entire construction set to make your own levels, and to top it all off, added a brand new fourth mission to the game. As an "HD" semi-remake for a classic game goes, this is exactly how it should have been done. Modern, but not TOO modern, and new features that complement the game but don't go overboard, plus all-new content to sweeten the deal. And all at a price point that's impossible to say no to. If you're a fan of the original, this is a no-brainer purchase. If you never played the original but like classic platformers with some puzzle elements, this is still a no-brainer purchase. Yeah, it gets pretty brutal difficulty-wise, but that's part of its charm. Well worth it and a wonderful update to a classic game.