Cave Adventure R

I know, I know. This probably ain't the best fit. Hey, it includes Minotaur as the game does! And It's about frustration and money. The Game is about the same, ain't it? So it fits pretty well. There is one difference, tho. You can't kill the horned beast in Ca Vee Aaare.

Thee Gay M is an early try of El Waka on Sandbox RPG and it includes some elements of open word games and several choices. I can't say that all of these elements are favorable and well-implemented. It is an interesting take on the engine, tho. This kiddo surely has some potential

Story
This one is taken right. It has solid simple grounding. Guys want to be rich. There is a cave with a treasure in it. Sounds fine to me. Waka's approach is lighthearted, built around characters. I'm not sure whether the author is native speaker or not. Lines are basic, but that works fine with me. The simplicity of language helps to build stupidity of characters. They are ridiculously dull.
Some other humorous situations are built upon fantasy tropes. They work well too. Especially the one with demon which points out stupidity of traditional limitations RPGs tend to have.
I think that the bestest thing about Cave R are multiple endings. Each of em has a different punch line and they all are really witty.


My kind of demon

Gameplay
It consists of fights and exploration. Fights are pretty standard. They are well balanced with small hp pools and that is good. On the other hand I got bored with them. There was an obvious reason for that. Automatized fighting showed as good as manual and faster. Also the need to grind on slimes in order to progress was questionable. I liked the idea of it, to implement a typical mmo feature. It didn't worked out so well, tho. It wasn't all bad either as it helped to keep the game as compact as possible.
Also I wouldn't have known this, If I hadn't bumped into author's thread on the topic of exploration. I couldn't defeat The Four Slimes of Apocalypse without that additional info. This definitely drags Cave R down.
The exploration part could be interesting, if only the game weren't forcing players to do it. Not everyone needs to know the joke with cardboard sword and the one with zombies. It would give the game some replay value if it weren't forced.
And placing items on the ground, below player, is kinda strange.

Art
Cave R works with 2k3 RTP and I should compliment El Waka here as I know his creations from Maps Weekly! thread and some of them are solid, some are weaker. And here we have some well-designed maps with working design and a touch of personality. Of course that some rooms are bare or over-dimensioned, It makes for a pretty sleek product.


Conformists!

Conclusion
El Waka's game show lot of potential and I place it amongst hidden gems of A Golden Week of RPG Maker 2003 event. You can try it if you want to spend some thirty minutes with easy-going RPG, which can show as deeper than expected.