Cave Quest is a matching game with a few hidden object levels. The basic premise is to match at least three tiles to move the characters along a path, but several levels have extra twists, such as locked blocks, growing vines that have to be cleared and ice blocks that take multiple hits to clear. There are several power-ups that help clear the hard levels, so it never gets too complicated. The nice mix of static and moving boards and the hidden object and adventure tasks in between really make this a top notch title.

The story is cute, but it ends rather abruptly. A father, mother, grandfather and brother have all gone missing and it's up to the sister to solve the mystery and rescue them from an evil, immortal king. Along the way, she'll be aided by a Shaman, a shopkeeper and her family as she rescues them. Objects are hidden in the world and gained by either completing hidden object levels or matching boards. Hot spots in each screen are pretty obvious and it's never too hard to figure out what to do with the limited inventory items. Once the final family member is rescued, the game congratulates the player and says the end. It let me wanting a little more drama.

Cave Quest is also on the short side, with about five hours of gameplay in the timed mode available. There's a casual mode that does away with the time, but other than that, there's no replayability options or extra modes. Why developers are skimping more and more on extra modes I don't understand, because it's hard to recommend a purchase of a game with five hours of gameplay and no real value to replaying it. However, for anyone who likes a good variety of gameplay and a cute story, this game is definitely all that.

Score: 7.2

Big Fish Games:
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