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Play The Enchanted Cave
Liked the music? Download The Enchanted Cave OST here
The Enchanted Cave is a fairly simple RPG/Puzzle, in which the player controls an unnamed hero that explores a single dungeon that consists of 100 floors. Every ten levels there is a shop, where the player can buy and sell items and equipment.
The unique feature of The Enchanted Cave is the Escape Wings system. When the Escape Wings are found and used, the player is warped out of the dungeon, and keeps all artifacts they’ve found, which are special equipment with a gold background. In addition, any stat gems are permanently kept, as well as the amount of gold the player has at the time of using the Escape Wings.
After using the Escape Wings, the player becomes stronger and better equipped when the re-enter the cave, allowing them to progress deeper with each run, until they’re able to reach the final floor, 100.
Inspiration
The artifacts and Escape Wings system is based on a dungeon called the Ancient Cave, in the SNES game, Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals. Lufia II itself is an RPG, and the Ancient Cave is a mini-game that only becomes available after nearly 10 hours into the main quest. However many players get sucked into the Ancient Cave, and spend as much time or more exploring it than they do the rest of the game.
I became a huge fan of the Ancient Cave, and thought that it could be a great idea to use as a complete flash game, and simple enough to use as my first flash game. It turned out to be a lot more difficult that I’d originally predicted, but I learned a ton during the development.
Another important game to mention is Tower of the Sorceror, a freeware, downloadable PC game that’s been around for years. It’s a great puzzle game, and really makes the player strategize what monsters to fight, if they decide that the treasure the monster is guarding is valuable enough for the health lost during the fight. The simple touch-to-fight battle system and puzzle-like design of monsters and treasures in The Enchanted Cave were based on the gameplay of Tower of the Sorceror.
Development
Before work on The Enchanted Cave, I’d had some experience in pixel art, so I was decent at it. I also had experience in the 3D modelling and animation program Blender, but I only used that for a few things, like the effects animations (enemy explosion, wings, heal), and for a base for the hero’s attack animation. I animated a 3D sprite-proportioned rig in Blender, saved those frames and pixeled over top of them to get as fluid of an animation as I could with pixels. Shown below is the sprite rig and the pixeled hero.
This was very time consuming, so for the enemies in the game I never used a 3D animated model to base them off of, and just did my best drawing frame-by-frame.
Goal
My primary goal in creating The Enchanted Cave was to complete a flash game to basically “get my foot in the door” of the flash game market, and professional game development. Today I am definitely more than pleased with it’s success!
-Dustin
Amazing Game! True RPG at it’s best
Much props!
This game is THE game.
Graphics are as i always said, useless.
You can make a graphic about 32-bits, or even 16, and still rock the fuck out of it.
Your game will serve to me as an inspiration, thanks A LOT.
And please, make a sequel if possible.
Playing this game was a surprising amount of fun. I went into it a bit skeptical but you won me over. Keep developing games; there’s definitely a lot of work involved but the rewards are great.
Thanks for the encouragement!
I enjoyed all the lufia games, there are several for varios gameboy systems and 1 of them has a 200 floor version of the cave. the 1st time you get to floor 100 it makes you need to leave to get an item to continue so it’s more like a 300 floor cave lol
how about the artifact book & achievement(collecting all artifact)
This is my favorite flash game! i’d LOVE to see a sequel, i’ve played this game so many times
i love the continuity it has with the atribute stones and artifact items!
Will you made iPhone/iPodTouch version of this great game?
Sorry, I don’t have any plans to, but it’s a possibility for it’s sequel!
it’s awesome+well made.
Really a great game, I could not leave the PC until it was finished. Better than many commercial titles, you truly have the knowledge how to make a game irresistible
Loved Enchanted Cave – world needs more of this type of game! Action-RPG is overdone…turn-based FTW
Awesome game and what program did you use to make this game.
Yo, I love your game, its the only game on Kongregate that I still come back to and play over and over again!
Great game.
Thank you for developing the enchanted game. I really enjoyed playing it through.
If you ever make a sequel or a similare game, please improve the interface, using items/magic in battle was very hard.
Come to think of it, a sequel that is pretty much the same game & graphics, but with improved interface and maybe double the size of dungeons, add a few new enemies & items, maybe even skills and it would be pretty awesome.
Oh well, maybe someday, thanks for developing!
double the size of dungeons
I was thinking just the opposite – make the game shorter! It’s too tedious to play to level 100.
The tiny levels are ace, no reason to make them bigger.
TEC was a really good game with plenty of replayability. Don’t make a sequel.
What I mean is, don’t get tied down to this one just because it was a success and players loved it. Keep innovating.
Good gameplay, good design, music is oke, love the development options. One of the best online games in this genre if you ask me.
Played this a good bit back when I first saw it on Kongregate. I’ve really enjoyed it and thought I’d drop in instead of playing again. Interesting way you handled the attack animation. It was definitely worth the effort; the smoothness and polish of that animation is part of what keeps me playing. It’s the single most watched event in the game and the aesthetic appeal of the animation prevents it from becoming painful to watch that often. Excellent work, I’m looking forward to ZAPS
whens the next coming out =P. plus it would be nice to have a epic item list =P
usually a game gets old the moment one gets through it, but that definitely isn’t the case here. I’ve been through it numerous times, and keep finding myself coming back for more. Looking forward to your next big hit. Thanks!
Thanks for all the comments, everyone!
Will there be a sequel ever!?
awesome!
There isn’t a sequel planned at the moment, but there will at least be an action-RPG planned for after ZAPS.
Thought I’d make the effort to post on here. Awesome game. Please make a sequel.
The Enchanted Cave reminds me of another game I play called Fate. I absolutely love it. A quick, simple RPG to eat away at boredom. I must beat this game!
The Enchanted Cave is probably one of the most fun and addictive Flash games I have ever played, and has more replay value than most of the games I have shelled out hard cash for.
I wasted plenty of hours of my life playing this, and Mardek, another Flash game that stands at the forefront. 
Great job.
I like your pixel art. It really takes me back to my NES/SNES gaming roots. Long, chatty, epic storylines are all fine and good in fantasy rpg/adventure games, but a lot of games today have forgotten how to just be fun to play. It’s a pleasure to be reminded of the good ol’ days when big, expensive, fancy graphics weren’t the selling point.
I would love to see a rehash/update of this game with more challenging fights and/or some puzzle solving, another great feature of Lufia which would fit perfectly into this creation. Perhaps more manual control or at least more practical use of spells and/or the ability to specialize into spellcasting (without laboriously collecting spell-based equipment first) would also be excellent. ^_^
That said, I know you have other ambitions, but I’d be the first in line to play The Enchanted Cave 2: Even More Enchanted-er! Keep it up.
I’m proud of you man. A million plays on Kongregate! Are you serious!
Anyways, I’m more than addicted to your game while at work and can’t wait for the next one. Keep it up.