Thread by @spookysquid

Decided to check out Cave Noire a very early (pre Mystery Dungeon series!) console rogue-like for the original Gameboy from 1991, after hearing about it on @retronauts . Turns out it's shockingly good and has some surprisingly modern design! Quick thread!

Cave Noire is one of those games that takes a dense genre and boils it down to its very essence. Exposing what's great about it new players and fixing some of the core problems with the genre along the way.

A perfect fit for the Gameboy it's built around quick highly replayable 10-15 minute randomly generated dungeon crawls. This could easily have resulted in shallow dull gameplay but instead it's tight, elegant and incredibly compelling.

It mostly adheres to the very traditional "Berlin Interpretation" definition of roguelikes with rpg stats, turn based movement, combat on a grid, (semi) procedural generation etc but differs from classic RL design in some really interesting ways.
roguebasin.com/index.php?titl…

Like Unexplored/Brogue there is no levelling from combat. All stat increases are linked to gear you find while exploring, or very occasionally from enemy drops. This means when to fight becomes contextual rather then obligatory and exploring becomes central!

Instead of constantly pursuing the player, most enemies move in set patterns, similar to Crypt of the Necrodancer. Figuring out when and where to move to avoid combat becomes a key skill. The skip turn button has never been more important.

To help with this they made a subtle change in the conventional RL turn order
In Cave Noire it's:
Player Move
Player Attack
Enemy Attack
Enemy Move

This allows more situations where you're next to an enemy without being attacked, which helps given the GB screen constraint.

The meta structure and goals are also pretty unique and lean into what makes the game special. There are 4 different quests to pick from with unique goals and strategies required. Note that only one of these requires killing monsters!

When you finish a quest your given access to a harder version with 10 difficulties for each (Eg. collect more orbs). Early quest runs are often short, but unlike most roguelikes this is because you completed them not because you died!

This makes Cave Noire super beginner friendly without requiring the compromise of permanent upgrades. The later levels are still nail bitingly tough filled with moments where you just barely escape due to smart item use or a lucky hit after a screw up.

For example the orb quests get increasingly hard in an interesting way. Each orb takes up an inventory slot, and all they do is tell you whether there is an orb, sword or shield on the level you are on. The final difficulty requires you to fill your entire inventory with orbs!

All of this is wrapped up in some amazing UX especially given the button and resolution limits of the Game Boy and ESPECIALLY for 1991. Also super charming art and great chip tunes.

If you want more info on Cave Noire there's...
an English translation of the game: romhacking.net/translations/1…
and manual: annarchive.com/files4/CaveNoi…
and this is a nice write up on it where I grabbed some gifs:
rabbitboots.com/blog/2016/09/0…

This is one of the first games where I'm extremely tempted to create an unofficial sequel / spiritual successor that hews closely to the original source.

They nailed the basic formula perfectly first try, but you could still add so much more variety on top of this with more environments, enemies and items. Sad its unique qualities haven't been followed up since!

END OF THREAD

Oh also if you're looking for a modern real time roguelike that emphasizes exploration over combat I can't recommend Unexplored enough. Here's my old thread on it.

https://twitter.com/spookysquid/status/1078469296030867459

Got the first ending in Cave Noire by beating difficulty six of all four dungeons! Since difficulty goes up to 10 there's still almost half the game left as bonus content.

I'd assumed up till now that the dungeons generated at different difficulties were the same, just the harder quests required going deeper. But I'm seeing new rooms now. Eg. Never had double skeletons at any depth till late game.

Gating content like this is a smart move, it means even if the player gets stuck on a specific difficulty and generates a ton of dungeons there are guaranteed to be new situations to discover once they succeed.

One thing I haven't mentioned is that on higher difficulties you do get small stat boosts, but this mostly just gives you more tactical options since the difficulty rises faster.

The stat that gets the most boosts is luck, which I *think* effects enemy drop rates. If so, that means at higher difficulties it becomes significantly more useful to kill some of the tough enemies for a chance at getting a flaming sword or other powerful item. A smart shift.

What loot an enemy drops is consistent, (sometimes pulling from a couple options) but whether they drop something or not is random, so it's a gamble but you know what's up for grabs.

More Cave Noire design stuff I've discovered, because apparently I'm obsessed with this game.

Since I'm now in the post game hard difficulties where it's much harder to make progress I've been doing the exact same quest/difficulty run repeatedly and noticed a pattern.

While most item drops from chests are randomly distributed. Swords and Shields are distributed on specific levels. Eg. Doing the coins quest difficulty 7, you'll always find a magic sword at level 4, a wood shield at 5, a flaming sword at 8 etc..

The exact levels they're found at are different for different difficulties and quests, so I don't think they intended the player to figure this out. It is probably meant to appear random but also be distributed evenly enough to be fair since these are very important items.

My best bet is that this was the compromise they came up with given the Gameboy's constraints, and whatever their level generation code could handle easily. The GB was an incredibly low powered system, and even now the Switch can chug on 2D procedurally generated levels.

My fav discovery while running tests to figure things out is that at difficulty 1 all the dungeons end at level 8 with a maze of identical rooms full of 1 hit killer dragons.

Cave Noire has a much better sense of how to create dramatic moments in procedural dungeons than like 90% of contemporary rogue-lites.

I have been deliberately leaving out some of the cleverest bits of Cave Noire from this thread because I really hope people check it out and discover them for themselves. I'm trying to keep to analysis that I wouldn't consider a *spoiler*.

The dragon maze is such a great game design solution, because seeing the same room and giant monster is a great WTF moment AND by limiting the hard rooms you can see at difficulty 1 to just these it stops players from being spoiled on later runs where they'll need to delve deep.

It actually creates a stronger impact by having less enemy variety, plus it saves the surprise of seeing your first hydra, white dragon, giant etc.. This game is so damn smartly designed, they really make the most of their constraints.

More on how Cave Noire structures dungeons. Floors are quite small, made up of 1 to 8 rooms (maybe more?). I'm pretty certain these layouts are pulling from a set of templates, probably due to GB hardware limits.

You'd expect floor size to just increase linearly as you descend, and that's partially the case. But it breaks this up with small one or two room floors even far into the depths.

This breaks up the pace nicely and stops the dungeons from getting monotonous. If all low floors were 8+ rooms large it could lead to the late half of a run feeling like a real slog.

I'm pretty certain how many rooms are on a floor is based on a unique template for each quest/difficulty combo rather then being pure random, however with 40 in all it's hard to be sure.

While pulling from a series of templates makes it "less procedural" it does let them get some randomness and a hand tuned feel without the sort of modern CPU intensive itterative dungeon creation algorithms a modern game might use to get the same effect.

I want to get into how the actual rooms are created in Cave Noire but need to poke around a bit more and take screenshots first.

But since I'm waiting on a big windows update I'm going to talk about some of its UX/UI.

Several things in Cave Noire are communicated through these cute cartoon bubble icons. In this case I've just stepped on a trap tile that will crumble away next turn sending me to the floor bellow. Stepping on these is also accompanied by a nice cracking sound.

The question mark tells me that there is a secret passage nearby. It appears automatically (doesn't take an action) when you are next to a wall with a passage or the two walls next to that wall.

Due to room shapes this wide trigger area means you usually only need to check a few spots to know if a secret exists! This in an era where running against every wall hitting an action button was the norm.

Once you find a possible secret wall you open the tunnel by slamming into it, taking a movement turn and giving any adjacent enemy a free attack. In this case I had a 50/50 chance of hitting the right one since there was no way to check all adjacent walls (corners don't count)

Since you are usually avoiding combat the rooms you are searching are rarely empty, you'll need to maneuver carefully to get near all the possible spots for a secret passage. So secret doors reinforce the core gameplay of enemy dodging and exploration.

The walking person bubble let's you know there is a secret walkable pit. It only shows up if you are facing the pit. Since you only face the direction you last moved or attacked some of these near narrow paths are very hard to spot!

You can also spot these walkable pits by watching non flying enemies move over them. From what I can tell these pits are consistent so once you know they exist you can exploit them if you find the same room layout.

The final cartoon bubble type occurs when you use an orb. This will tell you if there is a sword, shield or orb on the floor you are on.

Orbs can be used an infinite number of times but it does take a turn and a precious inventory slot. You only have 8 of them total!

However swords and shields are rare and the only way to permanently increase your attack or defense (for that run) so carrying an orb can be worth it! BTW when anything effects a stat (other than HP) it animates your stat change so you know!

In general Cave Noire does a great job of providing important info to you. Even things like how many turns a buff will last are displayed clearly.

Eg. 9 more turns of invisibility. Also more than half way to completing my quest for 38 gold!

The select button toggles a HP display for all the enemies on screen. Since Cave Noire keeps numbers small it's pretty easy to estimate if you can take an enemy out next turn or should avoid at all costs.

It's not perfect about this stuff, while it has a great auto updating mini map, I really wish it displayed the stairs down once I found them.

It also doesn't differentiate between types of items within a category on the game screen. I have no way to tell if that's a vital healing potion or less useful antidote. If my inventory is full I'll have to drop something to find out. It's a rare fumble for this game.

My Cave Noire obsession reached new heights over the weekend as I started mocking up a screenshot with my ideas for a spiritual successor. Progress so far in this thread...

https://twitter.com/spookysquid/status/1183474007439478785

I'm really happy this thread has been getting around, I still have more stuff about the design of Cave Noire I want to post about, like it's fantastic fog of war mechanic, items, and how rooms seem to be generated. Need to collect more screenshots first!

Ok just found a little design touch in Cave Noire that feels WAY ahead of its time, before I can talk about it I'll need to explain a bit about how rooms and time work in the game...

Each room in Cave Noire is a single screen and dungeon floors are made of 1-8 of them linked together. Monster's can't leave their respective rooms, however they do keep moving around when you move or pass a turn, even if you aren't in the room!

Eg. Here I walk out of a room and back in (so two moves). You can see the weird looking arrow blob has moved two squares!

Because most enemies move in basic patterns you can leave a room pass a few moves then reenter and predict where enemies should be. A useful trick!

This does mean that in rare situations you can end up entering a room and find a monster right next to you, giving it a free attack. Bad luck!

However Cave Noire cheats in your favour and secretly buffs your defence for that attack!

This Titan could easily take out half my hit points in a single attack but in this case because I've just entered the room it'll only do 0-2 points of damage (and 2 is rare!)

Because enemies always have a chance of low damage or missing this cheat is hidden from the player.

This has the effect of creating a nice scary moment, without unfairly killing or damaging the player. You feel like you had a lucky escape!
When you only have 1 hit point and die, it's still a nice dramatic death that really was the result of previous mistakes you made.

You might think a better solution would be to not let monsters step near doors when the player isn't in a room but this would have a lot of negative consequences: you'd lose the predictability mentioned above, have less spots to place monsters, and monster patterns could de-sync.

Anyway it's wild to see this sort of "cheat in the player's favour" mechanic in a game from 1991! Reminds me a lot of this great design thread (and resulting article) from a couple years ago:

https://twitter.com/Gaohmee/status/903510060197744640

polygon.com/2017/9/8/16263…

First medal earned towards master rank in Cave Noire. Beat this dungeon first try!

After seeing @zandravandra stream Cave Noire recently, I picked it up again and completed M rank! Once you get up into the optional high rank dungeons, runs go from 5-10 min up to 20-30!

I've been trying to find more games that play like Cave Noire and it really does seem to be an unexplored branch of the genre. There are other bite sized roguelikes but they tend to be more combat/leveling focused.

If anyone has recommendations let me know!