Cavern Creatures

Infobox VG| title = Cavern Creatures


developer = Paul Lowrance
publisher = Datamost
designer = Paul Lowrance
engine =
released = 1983
genre = Shooter
modes = Single player
ratings = N/A
platforms = Apple II
media = 5¼" disk
requirements =
input = Joystick / Keyboard

"Cavern Creatures" is a 1983 computer game for the Apple II family of computers, written by Paul Lowrance and published by Datamost, with title art by Art Huff.

Description

The player controls a small craft, navigating it through a series of winding caverns and tunnels while shooting or avoiding obstacles. The caverns scroll from the bottom of the screen to the top at a fixed speed, so the player must always move forward.

The obstacles filling the tunnels are mostly the "creatures" of the title and appear as simple icons like smiley faces, floppy diskettes, birds, eyes, apples, bunches of grapes, Pac Man ghosts, baseball hats, turrets, etc. Many of these objects are animated, but they cannot actually move around. Your craft fires bolts of energy simultaneously in three directions (left, right and forward) that destroy the creatures but consume the ship's energy, tracked by a green bar at the bottom of the screen. Energy is replenished by shooting occasional "tanks" on the tunnel walls.

Special objects in the caverns include indestructible Rubiks cube-like boxes that can be shot to gain extra points, thin wriggling snakes (one of the cavern's few mobile opponents) that cannot be destroyed, only avoided, and pulsing energy barriers.

The craft is destroyed if you strike any object or the cavern wall, but a new one can be put back into play at any position on the screen. The game ends when your last craft is destroyed or when you beat the final challenge. The game's introduction promises that "the end battle will be a surprise that no one can miss."