When comparing The Cave vs Crawl, the Slant community recommends Crawl for most people. In the question“What are the best local co-op PC games?” Crawl is ranked 6th while The Cave is ranked 40th. The most important reason people chose Crawl is:
Crawl has one lone hero enter a dungeon with objective to find the dungeon boss and strike it down. However, other players wish to take that glory as well, and will use all means possible to take the soul and spot in the story of the hero for themselves. Whoever players the hero, must struggle trough the dungeon, killing monsters and gaining money and experience to get new equipment and grow stronger. All the while other players will take control of monsters and traps to kill the hero. Monsters will make attempts cooperate to get the hero, but to get the soul one must strike the last blow and prepare defend themselves when roles change, one cannot be too cooperative with the temporary allies.
Specs
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Pros
Pro 3 player local co-op
The Cave supports up to 3 player local co-op play. Sadly there is no online co-op.
Pro Cheesy jokes of the best kind
The Cave has a good sense of humor within, something expected when considering the game was created by the same people as The Secret of Monkey Island.
Pro Characters based on 7 deadly sins
Each character represents one of the seven deadly sins making the game a bit of a moral tale.
Pro Unique gameplay, blend of cooperation and betrayal
Crawl has one lone hero enter a dungeon with objective to find the dungeon boss and strike it down. However, other players wish to take that glory as well, and will use all means possible to take the soul and spot in the story of the hero for themselves. Whoever players the hero, must struggle trough the dungeon, killing monsters and gaining money and experience to get new equipment and grow stronger. All the while other players will take control of monsters and traps to kill the hero. Monsters will make attempts cooperate to get the hero, but to get the soul one must strike the last blow and prepare defend themselves when roles change, one cannot be too cooperative with the temporary allies.
Pro Local (couch ) 2-4 asymmetric multiplayer
Crawl has built in support for local 2-4 player asymmetric multiplayer with 3 out of the 4 playing co-op against the main player.
Pro Replay value
As the game is played, different monsters are unlocked and dungeons change for each playthrough with different bosses making the game stay interesting as time goes on. Available items change each play-trough as well, players cannot choose same play-style each time as different weapons require different tactics.
Pro Retro graphics
The art style of Crawl is reminiscent of 8bit games of yore and yet are still detailed enough to have very different designs for the different monsters in the game.
Cons
Con Tedious level design
There is a lot of backtracking and lever pulling that gives a feeling of lazy level design to elongate the game.
Con Co-op may leave one or two players out on certain stages
Some stages do not offer gameplay for all co-op players. Although the co-op is drop in drop out, certain points of the game do not offer anything for the other players to do.
Con No online multiplayer
Obviously the game is designed around multiplayer play but sadly there is no online multiplayer included.