Title image for Cavern Adventurers showing three floors of a mine, with pixelated characters wandering around. There are larger, brightly coloured, pixelated characters superimposed at the bottom, representing a king, the assistant, a miner, knight and Kairobot. Published on: LadiesGamers

Cavern Adventurers Review

Game: Cavern Adventurers
Genre: Simulation, Strategy, Adventure
System: Nintendo Switch (Also on iOS and Android, coming soon to Steam (Windows))
Developer | Publisher: Kairosoft
Age Rating: US 10+ | EU 7+
Price: US $12.00 | UK £10.79 | EU € 12,00
Release Date: January 16th, 2025

A review code was used, and many thanks to Kairosoft.

In Cavern Adventurers, you manage a team of adventurers who strive to make the cavern network safe and manage a team of workers who expand and build an underground city.

Will there be light at the end of all the tunnelling?

Trouble in the Cave? Send in the Cavern Adventurers!

Above ground, with a cave entrance and buildings. There are a group of pixelated characters standing nearby. Published on: LadiesGamers
It looks so peaceful!

Cavern Adventurers starts with you selecting a name for your cave and a pair of adventurers. There are three pairs to select from. I spent time reading about the traits and trying to work out which would be the best grouping. However, I didn’t need to, as I gained the other four adventurers fairly quickly once I started playing.

The King explains that monsters have started to escape from the caverns, and it’s your mission to defeat, explore and secure the underground network of caves.

Floor one of the cave, with three pixelated characters moving around, looking for work. Published on: LadiesGamers
Dig here!

Holly Digby will guide you through your adventure, and the first thing she will do is introduce you to your team of workers. You have a miner who will dig and expand the cave, an explorer who will find treasure, a construction worker who will build facilities, and a freight worker who will collect and transport items around the caves. Eventually, you’ll have a facility worker who collects items to use in battle. Holly encourages you to get the miner digging the area to the left of the staircase. The miner will hurry to the spot selected and start digging. The other workers will start collecting ore or exploring, depending on their type.

The two cavern adventurers on floor one, battling a pink slime. Published on: LadiesGamers
Here comes my intrepid pair of Cavern Adventurers!

As night falls, your pair of Cavern Adventurers descend into the cave to battle the monsters which have emerged. They can also enter the monster spawn areas and clear the monster-filled smoke patches within the cave, as well as battle roaming monsters. Some monsters become sparkling on defeat, meaning they can be captured and become allies.

Build by Day, Battle by Night

Cavern Adventurers has an automated day and night cycle, lasting around a few minutes, although the time-lapse gets longer as you progress. Luckily, it can be turned to manual, which is how I played, as in Auto, it never felt long enough to complete all the activities.

Build menu, listing facilities such as gemstone spot, rest stop and candlestick. The number of ore needed to build the facility is also shown. Published on: LadiesGamers
What shall I build?

During the day, your explorers will automatically go exploring and digging for treasure, including finding new buildings. Your freight and facilities teams will also automatically start collecting materials and items. The construction workers will only build when you place a facility, otherwise they will wander around, often telling you they are bored. The miners will need to be shown which area to mine. Mining uses stamina, and stamina is replenished over real-world time. The amount of stamina increases as you level up, and it’s possible to recruit Cavern Adventurers who have a special trait for reducing stamina recovery time. Each worker has their own activity gauge, and they will need to rest once depleted before continuing their activity.

Battle game, with a Cerberus monster and others fighting against all the Cavern Adventurers. The strength of each side is shown, as well as battle cries, such as “Almost there!”. There is a row of items (like bombs and food) at the bottom. Published on: LadiesGamers
Who let the dogs out?

Entering a monster spawn point to battle also uses stamina. You can select how many Cavern Adventurers should enter the battle arena, and then you wait until that number arrives at the door. Once everyone is in, you are transported to the battle arena. The battle is automatic; the only input is the use of items to cause damage, replenish strength or increase speed.

Apart from a couple of battles, I fought with all my adventurers. Only after floor 9 did I start needing to use items to replenish strength, and that was in part to reduce the numbers of items in storage and only a handful of all the battles were really challenging. There are a few battles which require a guest adventurer and some which require ally monsters to fight.

Battling the boss within the cavern floor. There is a mass of activity, which makes it difficult to make out individuals. Published on: LadiesGamers
Who’s where?!?!

Each floor contains a boss, which will need to be unlocked before the battle. The boss is generally fought within the cavern, although there are a few which are done via the battle arena. In the cavern boss battle, your Cavern Adventurers will often be defeated and need rescuing. This can done via the ‘rescued’ icon to the right of the screen or by clicking on the bed icon above the fallen character. As you get more adventurers, the battle gets more frenzied, and it’s difficult to see who needs rescuing, how many enemies are still present and the strength gauge of the boss.

So it was really a case of watching for the ‘rescued’ icon, selecting it as needed and waiting for the battle to be over.

Aiming Higher… or Rather Deeper

Photomontage of the rewards from the king and cave rank conditions. Published on: LadiesGamers
What are my targets?

Whilst digging and securing the cavern, the King will reward your progress. By completing tasks, like collecting gold or digging blocks, you can gain tickets to try to obtain new adventurers, weapons and ally monsters. Alternatively, you can choose money or blue gems rather than the tickets.

There is also a cave ranking challenge. Each cave rank will require a target of gold collection, safety level and popularity. Gold is obtained by having shops underground. Safety levels are increased as you defeat bosses and monster spawn points. Popularity is increased by developing your underground city. Increasing your cave rank will increase and replenish your stamina levels. Although there are items to restore your stamina, I generally used the cave ranking to do that, as it was never a real challenge to achieve the targets.

At the end of each 7 day/night cycles your cave will be ranked in the National Cave Rankings.

The outcome window of using the agency for new adventurers. Published on: LadiesGamers
Who have I discovered?

The tickets are used at the Agency, where you gain access to new adventurers, weapons or ally monsters. However, it is a lottery, and quite often, the ticket will just help to rank up your existing adventurers or increase the number of available weapons or ally monsters. Adventurers and workers can only join your team if they have somewhere to live. This can be via specific dormitories built underground or by upgrading the above-ground buildings. In addition to the F to S ranking for adventurers, both adventurers and workers have skill levels that affect their efficiency, activity gauge, health, and battling abilities. You use gold to level up the Cavern Adventurers and items for the workers.

Some of your ally monsters can be housed underground to help attack enemies, and these monsters can also be levelled up to be more effective.

Facility compatibility menu, which shows which buildings will be compatible with each other, for example a construction dormitory and miners dormitory.. Published on: LadiesGamers
Wonder what those ??? are.

One aspect of Cavern Adventurers I really enjoyed and appreciated was the compatibility menu. Instead of just guessing which facilities would work together, you are given the combinations and just have to work out how to build or move the buildings in order to achieve them. Once achieved, your cave popularity will increase, but the buildings can be moved to other locations.

Ore is required to both build and level up the main buildings and facilities, but you need wood for the merchant shops. I found that I ran out of both materials very quickly, but luckily you can buy more with the blue gems.

Digging for Floor 15 in Cavern Adventurers

Dialog box showing Holly and the King, along with some of the cavern adventurers standing in front of the cave entrance. The words “Congrats” and “Peace has returned to the cave” surround the picture. Published on: LadiesGamers
Yippee! Peace is restored.

The endpoint of Cavern Adventurers is clearing floor 15 of the cave. Obviously, you can carry on digging, battling and exploring, but this is the place where your play points and overall rank are calculated. There are five components to the play points: the highest score achieved in the night battles, maximum funds, highest rank, monsters caught, and achievements gained. I achieved 2,531 play points and was ranked a C.

With hindsight, it would be easy to increase the play points score. Build more money safes and fill them up, complete more building compatibilities and raise the ally rating to get more achievements, use monster spawn points to catch more monsters and get a higher ranking.

The play points can then be used in a new game + to transfer elements such as character levels, equipment levels, ally monsters and their levels, facility levels, and up to 50% of the blue gems.

Alternatively, you can continue playing your existing game and dig deeper and with items unlocking at cave rank 66 or more, there is still plenty to discover.

Gameplay

In docked mode, it’s easy to read the text and the touchscreen shortcuts can be reached by using the pause (ZL). In handheld mode, the text in Cavern Adventurers is slightly too small to be comfortable, but there is the advantage of using the touchscreen shortcuts with a touch.

The menus work well, and the ‘back’ returns to previous screen, especially useful in the building menu to be able to select another facility to construct. The music is really pleasant, with a jolly upbeat tune.

Cavern Adventurers autosaves, although this can be turned off in the options. There is only one save slot, so any manual save overwrites the autosave, but you can have two separate instances of the game per user.

With the option of a manual day/night cycle, the time to play each part varies. However, it took about 15 hours to get to floor 15 and gain my play points.

Cavern Adventurers still displays some traditional mobile game functions, like a daily bonus and a once-a-day use of bonus tickets. The stamina replenishes even when you’re not playing the game.

Conclusion

Usually, I say how addictive it is to watch the pixelated characters move around and interact, but I didn’t get that with Cavern Adventurers. Maybe it’s because the colours imitate a cave, maybe the vertical layout makes it harder to watch, or maybe it’s because the characters don’t interact as well with each other as in some of the other Kairosoft games.

I enjoyed creating an underground city, especially getting the compatibility right. The selection and levelling up of the adventurers gave me a sense of achievement. However, it all became a little bit tedious as I approached floor 15.

Cavern Adventurers was close to being an “I’m not sure”, but there was just enough enjoyment to get into the next rating.

Final Verdict: I Like it I like it

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