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Cursed Caverns
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About the game
The cave is long and it scrolls to the right as you run. Gems are scattered along the way (ten points each), and the exit is at the far end. Between you and it there are spikes, pools of lava and bottomless gaps, mushrooms that bounce you high in the air, and a small cast of monsters: green and red slimes that crawl along the ground, mummies that patrol back and forth on their platforms, and flowers that shoot pollen at you when you get close. Touch an enemy, spikes or lava, or fall off the screen, and the run is over: a short game over screen, and you are back at the title.
It is a very compact game, 128 by 128 pixels and a handful of files, and its pleasure is in reading the cave a few steps ahead: when to jump, how far, and what to wait for. Gems are worth points, so there is always a reason to take the risky line instead of the safe one.
Cursed Caverns was written by Takashi Kitao, the creator of the Pyxel engine, as one of the sample games for a book about making games with Pyxel, and it ships with Pyxel as an example app.
Playing it here
The first time you click Play the page downloads Pyxel and the Python runtime (about 15 MB), which takes a few seconds; after that the game shows a "click to start" prompt, and one more click starts it with sound. Nothing is loaded from other sites, and nothing is saved: every run starts from the left end again.
On the web we turned off the Esc key that closes the game on the desktop, because on a web page it would only freeze the screen. After a game over the game goes back to the title by itself; reload the page to start over after a win.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Left / Right arrows | run left and right |
| Space | jump (from the ground) |
| Enter | start from the title screen |
| Gamepad d-pad and A | the same, on a connected controller |
A few things worth knowing
Look ahead. The screen only scrolls once you pass the middle, so you often see the next obstacle just in time to react. Slow down when the view is empty.
Mind the enemy types. Slimes crawl along the ground, mummies walk to the edge of their platform and turn around, and flowers stay put and only fire when you are within a short distance, so each one asks for a different jump.
Mushrooms are springs. Landing on one throws you much higher than a normal jump, which is how you reach the high gems and the wide gaps.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an end? Yes: reach the exit at the right end of the cave and a clear screen appears. Reload the page to play again.
Is my score saved? No, it is only shown at the end of each run.
Does it work on a phone? The game was made for a keyboard or a game pad. The page offers an on-screen pad on touch devices, but we have not tested the game with it.
Why does it say "click to start"? Browsers only allow sound after you interact with the page, so the Pyxel launcher asks for one click before it starts the game.
Is it free? Yes: the game is under the MIT licence and the source of this build is available from this page.
Credits and licence
Cursed Caverns was made by Takashi Kitao, the creator of Pyxel, who also drew the art and wrote the sounds in the app's Pyxel resource file. It is distributed in the official Pyxel repository as an example app, with the header "license: MIT". The licence text and what we changed are in the licence file. The build served here changes a single line, turning off the Esc key that quits; the original app, the patch and the build scripts are hosted alongside the game.
It runs on the Pyxel engine (MIT) and the Pyodide runtime (MPL-2.0), whose licences and source are linked from the Licenses page.