GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/Ry645/Caveneer

Game description
Caveneer: A short game about momentum, secret levers, and speedrunning.

Dash around in this short cave-crawling experience involving a wizard, their grappling lash, and a winding cave full of puzzles and levers.

Use the grappling lash to gain speed, and dash to redirect it. You can go really fast.

You'll also obtain another tool to power your journey, but let's save that for later...



After you beat the game, try to one-up your personal bests by playing the game faster and faster. It features an in-game timer.

Be vigilant. The cave will judge you for your skill.

Aim for the elusive S-rank.

Or the secret rank. Your choice.

Theme interpretation
In short:
Caveneer makes use of levers to reveal secret areas the player can travel through.
The game's introduction and atmosphere are dark and mysterious.
The cave is sentient for some unknown reason.
The player can discover secret tricks to improve their speedruns.
There's also a secret rank, guarded by a funny number.

Now for the long answer.
Originally, my game plan was to create a procedurally generated dungeon-crawler in which the main upgrades were hidden in secret rooms.
However, that soon proved to be virtually impossible given the time constraints and my other responsibilities, so I settled for a smaller scope.

I kept the concept of hidden rooms in my game, but I did away with procedural generation.
Instead, I revealed hidden game objects to the player.
The player would flick a lever, and they would suddenly return to see everything changed!

I kept a mysterious vibe throughout the game, instilled by the game's introduction.
I also gave the cave a bit of a personality, which is left unexplained.

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