Roving In The Dark (Review)

Roving In The Dark is a retro themed "cave exploration platformer set in 1996 You play as a bearded caver (known as "Local Spelunker") who is tasked with rescuing ill-equipped treasure-seekers while finding treasure, hidden there by a medieval thief, for the local museum." Developed by Hayo van Reek and published by ClickTeam.

Right at the start you are robbed of all your equipment and have nothing but a headlamp, so you go off to explore the caves in search of your gear. Aside from finding your stuff you will also need to save explorers and treasure seekers who have gotten themselves lost or stuck in the caves many tunnels and crevasses, as well as gathering treasure for the local museum along the way. As you progress through the four separate cave systems, you'll find better equipment like ascenders and daisy chains or whatnot, that will allow you to reach new areas. Traversing the caves is done by clipping yourself to ropes to get across gaps, and descending farther into the caves, wedging yourself between walls to climb to certain places (Which was my favorite part of the game), climbing with spiked boots, and of course jumping and ledge grabbing.

Along the way you'll run into many dangerous hazards such as falling stones, slipping and falling into holes, getting frostbite, running out of batteries, being pushed off of ledges by foreign cavers, and more. Though the true danger is fall damage, falling any more than about two feet could end your life and set you back at the last save point (save points are disguised as little tents that you sleep in to save progress, it's adorable). This one aspect made the game far less enjoyable for me, it was pretty much the only thing that killed me throughout my entire playthrough, and it happened fairly often, most of the time just by jumping a little too high. Other than the crazy stupid fall damage, I enjoyed the game.

The look and sound of the game was clearly designed from the start with old 8-Bit era games in mind, the developer even stated. "Roving in the Dark is heavily influenced by the limitations of 8-bit era games, with tiny pixel art graphics, a low color palette and a low resolution. It does not have music in game, but 8-bit ambient sounds instead." I am a little disappointed about the "no music" part, as I think it would have benefited the overall atmosphere and charm if there was a little background music or maybe a theme. The game is very short, with an average runtime of about an hour or two tops. Because of this the game feels overpriced at $9.99 when it should probably be somewhere around $2.99 - $4.99.

Roving In the Dark while pretty simple gameplaywise, slightly frustrating at times do to the abysmal rate of fall damage, and a bit overpriced for it's very short runtime. Is still an enjoyable retro throwback of a platformer, with a pretty cool concept and very nostalgia graphics and sound design. Roving In The Dark is available for $9.99 on Pc/Steam. I would recommend waiting for a sale to pick this one up, unless you're a classic 8-bit fanatic.