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Review
Other reviewers have found fault with this work. Notice I didn't say "game" -- it is my opinion that approaching this as a game is precisely where the fault lies. Yes, yes, you might say: IF's very project is questioning (if not collapsing) the boundaries between ludology and narratology, so it is a conceit that reviewers use the word "game" in the broadest sense. Yet, "The Cave" doesn't fit nicely with either game or fiction labels; rather it feels and plays out more so like a poem. This is to say its focus isn't telling a story, per se, but rather lyrically poeticizing human experience, albeit using the familiar cave trope, perhaps as a metaphor I haven't entirely unpacked...
There are game-like elements in this work, to be sure. And for what it's worth they are largely employed effectively. For instance, the (Spoiler - click to show)glowing moss allows you to see more details and examine items further, but disintegrates after a few turns. While on two play-throughs I found this mechanic does not seem to be consistently employed, it was nonetheless a nice touch that indeed amps up the stakes for the reader and demanding of them to take a more active role in participating in the interpretation of the cave and its treasures. A similar feature is the sometimes-employed (Spoiler - click to show)roguelike convention of needing to identify an object before using it, as with giving the elderly woman a book. In two play-throughs this NPC was the only time I encountered that mechanic, but it may be elsewhere.
These elements and others naturally lead to understanding this title first and foremost as a superficial escape-from-a-dark-maze game... whence (I suspect) yields the lackluster reviews. After all, if you select options at random you are bound to find your way out, and fairly quickly: the cave's generation is random to an extent, but there is not, I don't think, a way to perish or to obstruct the endgame). A game, this is not. Nor is this work, by it's randomly-generated nature, attempting to weave a narrative, even if some wisps of wonderfully-written exposition come to life here and there(Spoiler - click to show); for instance, do different things with the pebble on different playthroughs to see some authentic and well-done character-building.
Unless you've read some of the other reviews, you will find out only after the fact that the work is not a game or a story but a tool: a central "point" of this work is to generate D&D character ability stats. The decisions you make impact the stats in opaque but likely thematically linked ways (I wound up generating very high charisma on both play throughs -- likely due to my style of play and the decisions I tend to make). By putting in the 10-minutes or so it takes to reach an ending, you are constructing character sheet attributes to bring to the start of your next role playing campaign.
The cool thing is "The Cave" is certainly more artistic than you would expect when you realize this: it is meditative, introspective, and wallows in the beauty of language's power to describe both abstractly and concretely. Even so, I found myself wondering whether we really need yet another moody, atmospheric treatment of the human emotions of depression, nostalgia, memory etc. Emotion simulators, as I call them, have swept to fixation in the indie game scene in the last 10 years to the point of being perfunctory. But "The Cave" prevails where others in this category fall flat. Why? Simply because it is extremely well-written. Play this not to get lost in the story or the puzzle, but the language itself. Approach this the way you would approach a poem of merit, with the simultaneous impulses to receive and interrogate. It makes sense that the author is an established poet, as this work seems to be an extended and interactive prose poem at its heart -- even as it serves as a fun character-generator utility.
Perhaps the genius here is "The Cave" simultaneously resists IF labels while intersecting two disparate functions: art and utility. Worth checking out if you are the kind of person who browses the Poetry Foundation for your own sake... or if you are starting a new RPG character.
