Cave Story’s Secret Santa: 2021 Download And Play It For Free

This holiday season, give yourself the gift of Cave Story’s Secret Santa, a new game that you can download and play for free for a short time! It’s a short side narrative about stealth and puzzle solving, featuring characters and locations from Studio Pixel’s original adventure.

Following Balrog’s recovery of Chaba’s stolen Christmas presents, the timid Mimiga known as Santa must sneak into every home and return the missing packages. Santa discovers essential stuff, eats tasty cookies, and lays the gifts under the Christmas trees where they belong while he tiptoes past the beds of sleeping people and avoids being noticed by patrolling Gaudi.

This was a fun game to play. It’s a fun Christmas-themed stealth game set in the Cave Story universe. To be honest, it could have been any world, but We don’t find this choice to be particularly insulting, even if it does inevitably feel like light nostalgia bait (which isn’t always a bad thing because it doesn’t feel forced). The gameplay may not be enjoyable for everyone, especially considering Cave Story’s fast-paced action. Your objective is to distribute gifts without being discovered. Every level has cookies to consume as a bonus. It’s fairly short and simple once you get the hang of it. By implying a new mechanic, the game performs an excellent job at teaching it. However, during our initial playthrough, we did not stun any guards because we didn’t realize it was possible until we looked at the achievements. We were simply too naive. On a side note, we appreciate that there are multiple methods to play the game rather than just one. Also, hitting somebody is a pleasurable experience. We also discovered sprinting by mistake by pushing Shift. This game has the potential to show us how to use the controls in the game (like Undertale does at the beginning when you start it the first time). We’d also like custom keybindings, but we’re fine with the controls as they are right now. Though it appears that pacifism is still broken, as we didn’t bonk anyone during our playing but still didn’t obtain the achievement. Rampage is possible, but it appears to be bugged.

The graphics are adorable. If the scanlines bug you, you can toggle “effects” in the settings menu for a clearer look. The soundtrack is enjoyable despite being a little monotonous (this is countered by the fact that the game is short, so the music doesn’t linger too long). It’s based on Cave Story’s incredible soundtrack, and it serves as a reminder of how great it is.

We went in with no preconceived notions. We weren’t expecting a “Cave Story 2” in the first place. Aside from the music, there wasn’t anything that made us think “this is a fantastic Cave Story tribute.” Nothing, though, struck us as a particularly poor compliment. It was totally fine; it wasn’t offensively horrible, but it wasn’t mind-blowing either. We’re glad they remembered Cave Story, let alone supporting characters like Santa. This is acceptable for free.

We went back and forth with this review because we couldn’t decide where to end it, and we still can’t. Originally, this was just a game review, but we found out that the rumors about Nicalis and Cave Story were untrue. After then, everything swiftly spiraled out of control. We wanted to dispel rumors without seeming like we’re saying “they’re not that horrible,” review the game without mentioning Nicalis too much but without passively endorsing them, and so on. As time went on, more and more thoughts about the game surfaced. We believe we are mainly satisfied with this review at this time, but it has been fully revised to what it is now.

Santa can push and pull obstacles, turn on and off light switches, pry open ventilator shafts, and more. But he’ll have to keep an eye out for dangers and avoid making any noises that would draw attention to himself. Before it’s too late, get Cave Story’s Secret Santa!

Click here to check out our recent review on Sam And Max: Beyond Time And Space.