Caveman Warriors, the rather sweet platformer that supports 1-4 players is now out

I tested out Caveman Warriors [Steam, Official Site] way back in March of this year before the release and I came away impressed. Now that it's released, how did it go?

Disclosure: Key provided by the developer.

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The game was funded on Kickstarter, where the developer gained $11,205 in funding. Not a large amount, so it's interesting to see what they've been able to do with that. They had Linux support in Early, which was really nice to see.

While the game features up to 4 people in co-op play, you can play it by yourself so you don't need to have other people with you.

I've tested it out in single-player and it was fun, but playing in co-op was even better. If you play by yourself, you're able to switch between the characters any time, you can still do this in co-op play, which becomes truly manic when you start switching character as it doesn't block the character someone else is using, so you end up switching them to someone else too.

The movement and animations certainly remind me of some early platformers and while it's not a retro game, it does feel like one. That's not a bad thing, it has lovely crisp and colourful graphics that look highly polished and it's quite amusing to play.

Each character has a special ability, which can be required for some of the platforming and overcoming certain objects. It's pretty great, especially since the skills are easy to use. Some of it becomes truly tricky with this feature thanks to the level design. You might need to throw a spear into a wall, to jump on it, while enemies are above and below. There's a fair amount of good timing and slick button pressing involved, but it feels great when you finally get past a section like that. These cramped sections are especially manic in co-op, when you're trying to get your timing right together.

It's made me laugh a good number of times, especially with the simplistic AI. It's not terrible, far from it, it's just that they all have quite simple patterns. What I really liked, is the little unique things they each do. For example, the basic caveman enemy runs away after hitting you, often to their death — hilarious. That's not a bug either, it's part of the game and makes it almost adorable. Some of the enemy behaviour is quite unexpected, enemies might go off screen and come back behind you in some cases and it really caught us off guard!

There's lots more little things like that, which made me really appreciate the game as a whole.

The boss battles seem good too, with a good variety in their attacks. They're not massively challenging, but good enough to remain fun while keeping you on your toes. Even funnier again in co-op when you're both dodging or failing to dodge attacks.

When playing in co-op, if one of you dies they can be revived once you reach a checkpoint camp. A good system, since it's not too punishing for whoever drops out for a bit.

Issues

It does have a few issues with gamepads. First of all, it seems to not properly detect an Xbox One gamepad, with the on-screen prompts giving you some sort of XML-type code instead of the button. However, once I told Steam to use the built-in configuration for Xbox controllers it then worked had the right bindings to play, but the on-screen hints still didn't give the right info. Not a major issue, since it's playable.

When playing with more than one person, it often mixes up who is what player. Myself and Sin tried it and it assigned me as player 2 and her as player 3, weird but it worked fine. It would have been nice to be able to switch around who is what player, or pick instead of it picking for you.

If you're doing co-op and a gamepad disconnects, say you want to quit the game or carry on solo, the game will not allow you to do anything and just tells you to reconnect it. Having an option to just have them drop out, would have been nicer.

Overall

A simple, yet entertaining platformer. It's probably good for all ages that can handle some slightly tricky platforming and it has some great co-op action. The co-op play is seriously good, so if you regularly play with other people this is one to pick up for sure.