''Cavern Creatures'' is a vertically

scrolling shooter In computer displays, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display, vertically or horizontally. "Scrolling," as such, does not change the layout of the text ...

for the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

, written by Paul Lowrance and published by

Datamost Datamost was a computer book publisher and computer game company founded by David Gordon and based in Chatsworth, California. Datamost operated in the early 1980s producing games and other software mainly for the Apple II, Commodore 64 and Atari ...

in 1983. The title screen is by Art Huff. The game is similar to ''

Caverns of Mars ''Caverns of Mars'' is a vertically scrolling shooter for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. It was programmed by Greg Christensen, with some features added by Richard Watts, and published by the Atari Program Exchange (APX) in 1981. ''Cav ...

'' for the

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...

Description

The player controls a small craft, navigating it through a series of winding caverns and tunnels while shooting or avoiding obstacles. The caverns scroll from the bottom of the screen to the top at a fixed speed, so the player must always move forward. The obstacles filling the tunnels are mostly the eponymous "creatures" and appear as simple icons like smiley faces, floppy diskettes, birds, eyes, apples, bunches of grapes, ''

Pac-Man originally called ''Puck Man'' in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. Th ...

'' ghosts, baseball hats, turrets, etc. Many of these objects are animated, but they do not actually move about. The player's craft fires bolts of energy simultaneously in three directions (left, right and forward) that destroy the creatures but consume the ship's energy, tracked by a green bar at the bottom of the screen. Energy is replenished by shooting occasional "tanks" on the tunnel walls. Special objects in the caverns include indestructible

Rubik's cube The Rubik's Cube is a Three-dimensional space, 3-D combination puzzle originally invented in 1974 by Hungarians, Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the Magic Cube, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik t ...

-like boxes that can be shot to gain extra points, indestructible wriggling snakes (one of the cavern's few mobile opponents), and pulsing energy barriers. The craft is destroyed if it strikes any object or the cavern wall; a new one can be put back into play at any position on the screen. The game ends when the last craft is destroyed or when the player beats the final challenge. The game's introduction promises that "the end battle will be a surprise that no one can miss."

Reception

'' Softline'' noted ''Cavern Creatures'' resemblance to the

game ''

'', and praised its "top-notch ... wonderful" Apple II graphics. The magazine concluded that it "combines the best action of maze games with the excitement and challenge of the arcade". ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

'' wrote, "This is a case of 'The box artwork has little to do with the game'. The 'creatures' in this game are an assortment of symbols...but not the green meany on the box cover," and also "The underground city looks nice, the game is so-so."

References

External links

* Apple II games Apple II-only games 1983 video games Datamost games Vertically scrolling shooters Video game clones Video games developed in the United States Single-player video games {{scroll-shooter-videogame-stub