Cave Story: Why pain makes the glory worth it

When I was in high school I had a few friends I would sometimes visit after classes. One thing common among all my friends was that we all loved playing video games, and would sometimes trade games to get new ones. Mostly I traded games that I either finished and didn’t want to play anymore, or games that I got stuck on or softlocked in. Some trades were worth it, but some were a bit of a ripoff. I remember trading my copy of Yoshi’s New Island for a game I had never heard of before called Cave Story. I was under the initial assumption that this was some kind of Minecraft ripoff, with a name like Cave Story. I could not have been more wrong, nor could I have possibly been prepared for the agony and glory of what awaited me. This singular game sent me down a rabbit hole in the best way possible, and I still play it to this day. 

So what is Cave Story? Well, it's a 2D action platformer game. This is your one and only spoiler warning, as I do think this game is better if you go in blind. It's really hard to talk about the game itself without spoiling anything. So if you want to play the game yourself, the remastered version is $15 on Steam, or you can get the original download which is free. 

I got stuck on Cave Story when I first played it. I didn’t really know what I was doing or what the controls were, not to mention the player character feels rather slippery to control, and the first area is filled with instant death traps. This meant I spent a lot of time wandering around the first cave, falling into spike traps.

Eventually, after leaving the game and coming back to it, I found my way through and got my first weapon, the Polar Star. This is where the “pain and glory” aspect of the game really clicked in place for me. Getting past all of the instant kill spikes was so hard for me when I first played, but when I finally got that gun, it felt like an actual accomplishment. The game constantly does this, having difficult parts that are designed to test your skill. But when you do finally overcome these challenges, it makes the successes feel earned.

The game subtly throws choices at you that you don’t really understand at first. It's only on subsequent playthroughs that you realize that there was something different you could have done. I completely missed the other modes, secret endings, and other content until I started to do research on my own. Though this was mainly due to my own impatience, or not knowing about it at the time.

However, I do think that this can work to the game's detriment, as new players might get frustrated at how hard the game can be at times. A system that perfectly encapsulates this is the weapon level system. The game has a leveling system: enemies drop golden triangles when they die. Picking them up will level up whatever weapon you are holding, increasing the damage and even giving extra abilities. Like the machine gun that allows you to fly upwards with its recoil at max level. However, if you get hit at all, or take any damage, your weapon will lose its levels and become weaker. This can snowball into you taking some damage, your weapon loses its power, and then you get stuck because you don’t have the damage to defeat enemies.

I never thought that a simple trade of Yoshi's Island was going to be so impactful. Like the game, I had no idea the full extent of what awaited me in the caves. It was more than just a game, it was a test of my resolve, my willingness to undergo pain in order to find glory. If you want a happy ending in Cave Story, it's going to be hard, require a lot of skill, and even then you can’t save everyone. But happiness has to be fought for.