Giveaway of the Day - Crystal Cave Lost Treasures

Installation:

This is another first time giveaway thanks to Rake in Grass. Who’ve given us some excellent games in the past. Today’s download is approximately a 24Mb zipped file which installs to about 26Mb. There is no shortcut installed so make a note of where the game is installed to. The executable is labelled cc Once you’ve created a shortcut you can manually rename it to the full game title if you wish The unpacked zipped file contains a dual setup and activation module and a read me document. By default it installs to

C:\Crystal_Cave_Lost_Treasures

Though it tried to install to my desktop. The game should automatically activate. you can tell if you don’t have the full version because it will ask you for a registration code after the initial intro screens. allso at the top righthand corner where you can see the version number (v1.0) it will say “Demo vesion: 1.0″ (Which you can see in the second image below becasue I used the demo version to take screenshots and check out the game last night.

If the game doesn’t install to the default location a simple explanation may be that your cache hasn’t been cleared out for a while, so you may find it installing into the last game you installed from the giveaway project. You can clear you internet cache easily by right clicking on your internet icon (Internet Explorer) and selecting Internet Properties. For firefox users you need to go to the toolbar within your internet browser. Today’s review is an edited version of my review of Crystal Cave Gold. The main difference between todays game and the Classic is this one was made for the casual gamer and hence is slightly easier.

Introduction:

Crystal Cave Lost Treasures is a quest for long-lost treasures buried in pitch black caves, pyramids and temples of ancient civilizations. Huge gemstones were sheltered from the sunshine for eons of time waiting for explorers brave enough to unearth them.

You – as an intrepid treasure hunter – will need all your ingenuity to pass the traps and dangers of the underground and collect the treasure in more than 100 levels.

It’s.

Reference accessed 23rd April 2010HERE

The Game

Crystal Cave : Lost Treasure is a very good remake of the original Crystal Caves by Apogee (which is still available for sale for around $5) and is a spin-off Crystal Cave Classic for casual players, it’s an adventure logic game. Suitable for players of all ages. It’s basically a very good boulder dash clone. The video’s below show some of the levels you will find in the full version game.

If you’ve got the time and patience you can create many more levels of your own design by using the levels editor that’s packaged with the game. It has several sets of tiles which you can use to create different themes, or mix and match them to create something different. The graphics are nicely rendered, with colorful levels that allow you to use boulders, teleports, lifts, dynamite and other types of rock to solve the puzzle from each level. If you don’t like the music , which was specially made for this game you can use your own favorite music files. I’ve added more details about this at the end of the review.

Main game features:

Game features:
Explore lost tombs and ancient dungeons
Lots of logic riddles – train your brain!
Play in over 100 levels
Use teleports, boulders and other types of rocks to solve levels
Three graphic scenarios
Create your own levels using our simple editor

Minimum requirements:
PC Windows or Mac OS X 10.4+
1GHz, 128MB RAM
OpenGL

The game is divided into five chapters which include a tutorial chapter that contains 15 very useful levels, especially if you’ve never played a boulder dash style game before. The next four chapters include Hidden Egypt and Aztec Empire, both of which are easy chapters, then you have Kali’s Wrath that’s considered advanced and finally Lost Tomb that’s complex. All chapters apart from the tutorial chapter contain 25 levels.

When you first boot up the game you are led through several cut scenes, which are basically layered images that are given the feeling of animation by selective zooming – a quick and easy way of giving the appearance of real animation. The intro sets the scene well IMO. You can select any of the chapters from the five available, and any level from any of the chapters in any order you wish. you can also re-play any already played levels.

You can use either the keyboard cursor keys or the mouse to move your character. Boulders can only be pushed if there is nothing behind them. Arrows will sometimes point the way for you. You can zoom in or out of the playing arena if you wish. Access to the zoom controls is via the toolbar to the bottom left of the screen. To the bottom right is a quick load and quick save feature.

You can travel through sand but beware of boulders above you. If they are directly above you, you are safe as they will sit on your head, but if they drop from a greater height they can kill you. Breakable walls can be smashed by throwing something onto them for example a boulder or a beaker of acid. The aim of the game is to collect all the gemstones within a level; some gems may be found within walls, so will require smashing, others are found inside monsters, so you’ll need to use movable parts of the level to kill them before you can get the crystals. Monsters also explode and can be used to solve puzzles using this property. You can use dynamite when available to destroy pieces of breakable wall or to kill monsters. Dynamite will explode if you throw something onto it.

You can also move dynamite. To break iron walls you need to break the beakers containing acid. These are also moveable and can be broken by jumping on them. To overcome obstacles there are several tiles that you can use which include glass tiles which can be pushed into place then used to move other objects before smashing them by jumping on them. They will also break if you push them onto a wall. You can also use joker tiles which are movable in any direction and do not drop if you leave them suspended in air, but once they are placed against a wall you cannot move them away from it only up and down or left and right (depending upon whether it’s a side wall or a top or bottom wall) Joker tiles are especially useful for clogging up gaps in floors that would otherwise trap boulders. The elevator tiles are there to help you transport any movable object to a higher level in order to overcome obstacles. You just have to push the object onto the elevator. Other special tiles include the eight ball tile and the flip tile (which flips the whole level upside down), which is very useful for breaking walls that have boulders beneath them.

Images and Video:

You can see all of the above tiles in action via the first ‘tutorial’ chapter which as mentioned above has 15 levelHERE, plus four more videos that HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

You can find more videos HERE . You can also access all the video walkthroughs over at Rake in grass. They have created a page specially for the walkthroughs. You can find them at the bottom of the page below the Crystal cave classic walkthroughs. Not all of the levels have been posted yet. http://crystalcave.rakeingrass.com/help.php#cclt ” rel=”nofollow”>HERE

Finally I’ve uploaded nearly 50 screen capture images of the game including intro and menu images HERE. If you want to look at all the images on one page click on the View Grid to the bottom right of the screen just above the thunbnails.

Conclusion:

Overall this is a very enjoyable and good looking puzzle game. There’s lots of variety and to cap it off there’s a levels editor that will enable you to create your own levels. There’s no tutorial on how to use the editor, but I found it very easy to use. If you’ve never played boulder dash games of which this is one (not sure which came first any more, boulder dash or crystal caves) the first chapter gives you a very good tutorial. Definitely worth an 8 out of 10 for family fun and puzzle solving.

You can select from several languages including English, Polish, French, Spanish, German and Italian. The full screen/ windowed toggle is a useful feature, especially if you’re playing this at work.

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Other information:

I will be posting alternative games links in the forums only from now in part to try to retain the focus on the game giveaway. If you want to check out similar games you can find download links via the following link:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/7380

Changing In game Music:

You can change the in game music by replacing the ogg file . There are several music files that you can swap for music that you really like. By default it should be installed along the following path for both XP and vista (I’ve not purchased Win 7 yet – not going to until the first service pack has been released )

C:\Program files\Crystal Cave Lost Treasures\data\music

You’ll find several audio converters in the giveaway freeware library HERE; these will enable you to convert any MP3′s (or other formats) you would like to exchange for the present in game music. IMO, music that you like can enhance the gaming experience.