Cave Noire

Cave Noire is a roguelike game developed and published by Konami for Game Boy in Japan in 1991.

Why it Rocks

 * 1) Four different kinds of quests. Depending of quest type, you must slay monsters, collect coins, collect trophies (which have to be stored in inventory, decreasing space for items) or release fairies from cages; necessary number depends of quest level, each quest has 10 levels.
 * 2) No grinding for leveling up. Your start stats depend of quest level you choose, during the game you can raise your luck and max HP by getting special items. Most of time, the game is about evading unnecessary combats.
 * 3) No halberds dropping from rats. Each kind of enemies drops only one kind of items, and drop makes sense.
 * 4) Dungeons with fog of war add variety and creepiness to gameplay.
 * 5) Good graphics.
 * 6) Decent music.
 * 7) Easy to get into. Even if you play without translation, almost everything is intuitive and understandable due to game's minimalism.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) To unlock a cage with a fairy, you must stand not at the tile with cage, but next to it, which is somewhat unobvious.
 * 2) Developers made one of the dumbest design desicions possible for a dungeon crawler: CHESTS AND MIMICS DIFFER IN COLOUR. This destroys the entire purpose of having monsters that mimic as chests. They why would you have them in the first time?

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