One of the many student entries to the 2010 Independent Games Festival is Cave, a simple 2D game where you play as both a boy and a girl and explore a dark cave.  You can check it out here.

Although the game is short, it packs in a lot of questions and is easily one of the most intriguing games I've played in quite a long time.  I decided to ask some of those questions to Peter Lu, the developer of Cave.

First a few questions about you and games.  When did your interest in games start?

Since I picked up an SNES controller at my best friend in elementary school's place.

What made you decide you wanted to design games?

My mom got me started on Visual Basic way back and I got to the point where I could make a graphic move around and I had this whole plan to make it shoot bullets at things but never finished it. I love making things whether it’s food, furniture or games.

What are some of your favorite games?

Lately I've been playing Dwarf Fortress far more than I should. Cave Story was what really got me started on the whole indie designer route. Just to list a few other games I've really enjoyed for one reason or another: La Mulana, Shadow of the Colossus, God Hand, Spelunky, and Nikujin.

Assuming you'd like to continue designing, what area of the game industry would you like to be a part of?

I'd like to avoid the industry if possible. I'm not fond of how any profit/sales oriented industry works. The effect of this really shows in the video game industry. I'm working hard now in hopes of avoiding this in the future.

Do you have any other titles lined up?

Yes, I had an idea and then Kokomori announced its new theme for gamma4 and they just happened to be compatible so expect something for that. The game is called Roulette. I'm also making a short series of retro arcade style games with my friend. The series is called Tower Defense.  It's an homage to the old arcade scene and a mash up of old and new conventions. It's been a very fun project to work on.

Cave is very story focused.  Do you think you would want to work on a game that had little to no story?

The mindset I had going into designing Cave was to design a narrative that expands on the game medium to create a new unique narrative. My big grievance with commercial titles is how the narrative and game play are disjointed. Game play opens many new avenues for conveying narrative and meaning, and most games do little to explore new avenues. The goal of Cave was to take the illusion of control and construct a story or experience that works off of the idea that the player is in control of the game. The key to designing a good narrative for a game is interweaving game play and narrative. Referencing your question, this is why I'm not too fond of "experimental games" which focus on designing novel core mechanics but rarely break any grounds in creating new narratives. I took a lot of inspiration from Stephen Lavelle's games which often create both a new core mechanic as well as design a narrative that exists through the mechanic. A great example of this is Opera Omnia, which I'm not ashamed to say is the inspiration behind the graphic style of Roulette.

To answer your question though, I do not plan on committing myself to any type of narrative or any type of game just yet. Consider a game like Nikujin which gives hardly any "static narrative" (that is, narrative that is hard coded into a game, like a cut scene or text). Beyond being an incredibly well designed and balanced game, Nikujin makes you feel like a (naked) ninja invading a castle. The characters speak in babbles and the player is left to infer the actual dialog based on the action preceding and proceeding that moment. No game has ever made me feel so awesome. I want to tell new stories in new ways, but I also want to tell good stories in good ways. If a game is good, it is worth its salt whether it is original or not.

Cave could easily be thrown into the middle of the "games as art" argument.  What is your stance on this, do you believe games can be art?

This was a point of debate for myself for a while. The issue here is that a game must bridge the gap between its game play and its meaning. If it does not, then the game play can only detract from the game as art. Consider the latest, greatest hit of the mall, Call of Duty 6. I have no idea what the game is really about because I have not played it and don't want to. But let’s pretend I'm an expert on this game. So I'm playing this game and I'm like fighting some terrorists or something and experiencing the story of a modern soldier and it’s fucking real because the graphics are so amazing. I get shot at a few times and my screen starts blinking red so I hide behind a rock where I auto-heal. I power through and kill another ten terrorists before I accidentally throw a grenade against a wall and kill myself. No big deal, right? I start over and this time I'm smart and I don't throw the grenade into a wall and instead I kill another ten terrorists and keep powering through and save the captive family from the terrorists and I'm moved to tears. New technology has really allowed games to push into the border of realism where there is so much artistic potential. If the art behind Call of Duty was to recreate the feeling of being a soldier, then it succeeds in recreating the look but fails because it needs to be a fun game at the same time. Why does one respawn? So players won’t have to replay the game. Why does one heal over time? So players won’t die too often. Such artifacts constantly cut away from the visual narrative. Call of Duty tries to tell the story of a modern soldier and tries to be a game at the same time and consequently fails at both.

So do I believe games can be art? The contention here of course is the definition of game and art. Let me offer a thought on what is not art.  If a game promises more than it can deliver then it is not art. If not every decision made when designing a game has relevance to the meaning of the game, then it is not art. Call of Duty wants to be real but it fails in so many places that are more than just due to technical limitations (the limitations of the medium shall we say). But now consider a game like Serious Sam that gives (blasting aliens with rocket launchers) exactly what it promises (blasting aliens with rocket launchers). Can we consider such games that satire their own medium as art? Then we have games like Jason Rohrer's Passage and Cactus's Life is a Race which both say something profound about life through game play. These games NEED to be games to say what they are saying. To me, they must be art, but in their briefness we question whether they are even games. Finally we must consider games like La Mulana (in all its modesty) paint the remnants and history of a vast world for us to explore and interact with or a game like Cave Story which invites us to be the hero of a heartfelt fairy tale. For me, the act of playing is not art, but the impression these games leave on us is.

I think I've babbled long enough on this topic.

Now a few questions about the game.  Is this your first game?

It's my first game that I can call complete.

Was this a project that you did on your own?

I tried to get my friend to program it but he said he did not want to do a platformer yet so I just went ahead and did it myself. I did all the design and artwork too. For sound, I used SFXR for everything. I tried making some screaming and grunting sounds with a mic but that did not turn out well. It was pretty fun doing the whole thing. I spent about three months on it. Hopefully, my next endeavor will come about much faster now that I have that much more experience.

What came first, the type of game or the story?

The type of narrative came first. Then I designed the settings and the characters and eventually the story in that order.

What genre would you put Cave into?

A platformer? Not really ha ha. I do not know. The thought never occurred to me.

Was the choice to have no music a design choice or a technical one?

Music is an interesting beast. Everyone knows the power music can have in creating atmosphere. But rarely does music ever "exist" in the space the game takes place in and becomes this artifact in the setting that people never ask questions about. For Cave, I feel silence complements the loneliness and claustrophobia better than music could. Music is certainly something I'll consider exploring in future games though.

You suggest people play the game in fullscreen mode, why is that?

Aesthetically, all games do better in fullscreen with the exception of maybe desktop sheeps and RaRa Racer. I felt it was particularly important for Cave to create a feeling of being stuck in a dark cave rather than playing a game in a window hovering over some brightly colored window. Of course, players are free to choose their own experiences as they will.

Are you concerned about people who don't play your game and assume it's similar to another indie title Cave Story?

The title is an homage to Cave Story so it's okay if people get that impression when they read the title. I think the game play distinguishes itself from Cave Story quickly enough that this is not an issue for anyone who plays the game. The title is also a pun for anyone who can figure it out.

The rest of the questions go a bit deeper into the game and may be considered a bit too revealing for those who haven’t played.

The page for Cave on the IGF site has probably the shortest description out of all the titles:  "A boy and a girl exploring a cave."  Even your website just has the logo for the game.  Why did you decide to be so minimalist?

I was a bit conflicted about this decision. It always bothers me a little bit when the author of a game puts the game out complete with its own Cliffs Notes. I feel the only time when something should be explained is when it involves some reference that players cannot be reasonably expected to know (for example, some cultural practice, or some personal experience). The game should really speak for itself. Of course, it’s always a battle between the audience and the author. Especially for an author who has no reputation, there is little incentive for players to delve deeper. I feel Cave can speak for itself if the players are willing to spend the time to read into it. I had hoped that there'd be enough of a community talking about Cave to interpret everything there is in the game but this has not happened yet. In retrospect, this might not have been the best decision given my reputation (or lack thereof). Everyone I've talked to who has played my game have a much better appreciation for it after I explain it to them.

With that in mind, I think this is a good point to briefly synopsize what the game is really about and try not to sound like a pervert. The narrative is an allegory for the first time a teenage couple have sexual intercourse. The style should be loosely reminiscent of those older coming of age movies. Specifically, the game is about a boy and a girl exploring a cave, and the consequences related to that for each character.

The game derives its meaning from metaphor. A female acquaintance of mine played the game for about ten seconds before remarking to me "Peter! This game is sexist!" The difference between the boy and the girl's movement are there to suggest a distinction in gender representation in the narrative and also to satire gender representation in video games in general. The boy moves like any other video game character. He moves fast, jumps absurdly high, and does not need to recover after falling. The girl moves much more realistically to the point of annoyance. She must climb on top of things that are waist high, moves slowly, and has to light her way through the dark cave and crawl through narrow tunnels.

More details later.

Why were there spikes in the game?  You respawn very close to where you die, so what made you decide death was necessary?  Also, when the boy dies and you respawn, if you go by the spikes you fell on, all that is left is blood.  When the girl dies her body always remains, and if you die multiples times, multiple bodies are left.  Was there a reason behind that?

Death is another big gripe that I have about games. Death is such a powerful narrative element and is almost always underplayed in games to facilitate visceral entertainment, playability and sales. If death is going to play any part in any game, then there needs to be a reason. The ironic consequences of death in games have been pointed out satirically in games like (almost all of) Jesse Venbrux's games and Raitendo's Free Will and You Only Live Once.

Repeating myself a little bit here: Death is a narrative artifact needed for game play. A shooting game is not challenging if the player can't die, and not fun if there are no enemies to shoot. With games with realistic graphics that are literally trying to look real, this artifact becomes more and more apparent as real graphics create a stronger association with the game and the real world and its physical laws. I think the real solution here though is that there needs to be fewer games about killing things.

I cannot say Cave uses death with quite as much wit as Cactus's Life is a Race, or with quite as much emotion as Jason Rohrer's Passage. Adding death into the game was to give myself more flexibility in designing the narrative. The girl leaves her corpse behind to suggest a permanence in her death, while the guy just leaves a smatter of blood (because it's cool and all) but gets right back up and keeps going with no other sign that he is dead or injured at all. For the girl, death is symbolic loss of chastity. When the girl dies, she loses part of herself which takes the form of a corpse that does not go away. In contrast, the boy does not leave a corpse behind to suggest that there are no consequences to his actions. For the boy, death is symbolic of quite literally, nothing.

Occasionally the characters will, for lack of a better description, pick up a "note," and those "notes" seem to correlate to thoughts they have about each other.  Why did you decide these "notes" should be lying around instead of the characters just speaking at certain check points?

The "notes" are actually intended to be pieces of the other character's clothing (to further hint at the meaning of the game). The only thing that suggests this is the color of the clothing which matches the color of the other players clothing (i.e. the girl finds blue and brown clothes and the guy finds red and cyan clothes). It was intentional that this fact not be too explicit.

For a while, the game did not have the dialog at all. I added the dialog for two reasons. First, to give a sense of goal and reason for players being in the cave, and second, to suggest at the meaning behind Cave by establishing the background and thoughts of the two characters. I had at least one person say they preferred the game without the notes, and one person say that the game needed more to suggest at its meaning. I'm undecided myself.

There was at least one note that I had to go out of my way to find.  Was there a reason for not putting some notes along the path?

There are actually two such messages that are hidden. They both contain messages that are a little more suggestive of the boy's consciousness. Again, there was a line that needed to be drawn as to how much is spelled out for the player and how much is left for the player to discover and interpret themselves. I feel the hidden messages complement the idea that there is more to the game than meets the eye.

One of the most interesting moments of the game is when the text "I want her" appears in front of the boy before a platforming segment.  If you fail during it the text "harder" appears and then "harder..."  Nothing else similar to that appears in the game.  What was the reasoning behind that?

I'd hate to spoil this one. Again, it's a pun in the same sense that the title is a pun. Consider the shape of the section that follows where the text appears and what happens there and what dying physically represents during this part. Suffice to say, I took a little inspiration from Miroslav Malesevic's I Love You series. Of course Cave is a little more subtle with its metaphors.

There are two sections in the game where the boy lights a row of candles.  Is there any significance behind this?

See above for the first set of torches. The second set was intended to complement the disruption of the players control over the character at the "climax" of the game. At this point in the game, another girl appears. The boy does not know that this is not the same girl he entered the Cave with but the player is aware of this fact. The girl, the boy, the second girl, and the player's knowledge do not overlap. The idea for this part was to reverse the role of the player and the game. Until this point, the player plays the game, but when the second girl appears, the game in some sense is playing and testing the player. What the player assumes to be true at this point is flipped upside down.

On a deeper level, the meaning of the second girl can be read as such: Her death is symbolic of the commitment of her body. The player does not choose whether the girl lives or dies because the girl has no choice but to commit herself in a physical relationship. The boy on the other hand has a choice to commit himself and this choice becomes the player's choice. If he chooses to commit himself by jumping into the pit, the boy must take the same path through the game that the girl did representing the idea that the boy must go through the same challenges as the girl did.

Is there any meaning behind the symbol near the end of the game that looks like an arrow pointing down?

If you look carefully, you will see that it represents the bonding of male and female, if you know what I mean.

Do you know anybody who has actually got the good ending first, and not by accident?

For a while, this was a pretty big issue. Everyone was getting the good ending. I made some design changes which would incline/force players to get the bad ending first. Certainly, some people still get the good ending on their first play through, but that's not a huge deal. It's interesting to consider how this can affect one's interpretation and experience of the game, but I have nothing to say about this yet. In any case, if I wanted full control of a player's experience I'd have made "Cave the Movie".

Does it bother you that of those who have seen both endings, most people prefer the "bad" ending?

Not at all. I wanted to suggest there is no distinction between the bad and good ending for the boy. Hence, as the boy in the game sees it, the bad and good endings are identical. It is the player that must realize the implications of the bad and good ending and make a judgment for themselves. I also did design the bad ending to be a little more entertaining than the good ending because that's how it is in real life sometimes (not to suggest I support such things).

To your knowledge, has everything in the game been discovered?

The two messages I mentioned earlier are the only hidden things in the game. You can also crush the guy if you close a door while he is standing under it (actually, this was causing an infinite loop hit collision bug that I conveniently used to my advantage). There's also a fun message for anyone who messes with my source code and turns on the level...

Finally, what would you like to have players get out of the game?

I hope players will be enjoy interpreting the different meanings of game play and realize there's more than one way to tell a story in a game.