CP Verlag...a name that reminds people of games with nice graphics and mixed gameplay. Actually CP Verlag was not a commercial software house, that was the name that two German magazines used to publish games under (The Magic Disk).


Those games were written by amateur programmers. There were three advantages to this; firstly it gave everyone a chance at developing games. Secondly it allowed CP Verlag to continue long after all the commercial publisher had stopped releasing games on C64, CP Verlag games kept coming out until 1996. Thirdly, it gave many people the opportunity to pick a classic game and improve it. The game I'm reviewing here, Dark Caves, belongs to this category.


Dark Caves is nothing but a H.E.R.O. clone, and a very good one at that. The gameplay is basically the same, you are a guy with a jetpack, a laser gun and bombs. You have to fly in the caverns, however your jetpack has a limited amount of juice before it stops working. Therefore you will need to minimise your flying time especially in the final levels. The bombs are used to destroy enemies, walls and whatnots, but again, they are limited. They should not be wasted as replacements don't come easy. Dark Caves manages to capture the player's attention like H.E.R.O. did...the only problem is sprite-background collision which seems to be a bit off. Sometimes it is too easy to get killed by getting close to spiked-walls.


The major improvement of Dark Caves over H.E.R.O. is the graphics. The backgrounds are more polished and colourful, the sprites and the enemies are more detailed. The levels are usually short but well-designed. You can't carelessly fly through the caverns as a nasty surprise usually lurks at the beginning of every next screen.


Dark Caves is a nice, worthy H.E.R.O. clone.