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Actually, it's the treasure to the left of the door which I can't seem to get.

Beaten on my 5th try, figured out the trick that we needed to know after 2 tried. The other 2 in between were me trying to figure out how to position the boulders.

I thought that that boulder was a little bit suspicious...

Anyways, this was a pretty awesome puzzle cave; really fun. Deserving of a 10, easily, IMO. This is like exactly what Dando used to preach about what we should make.

This sort of reminds me of Midinight IV, where you tried to lure the player into doing something, except I didn't do it wrong the way you wanted me to do it wrong, and the real solution was a lot easier to find than in MIV

Yeah, the point of the cave was to not be too hard in a way that you look at it and just want to give up. I tried to make it so if you screwed up, you could somehow figure out what to do by thinking backwards. Like, getting those final four treasure chests, you know you need to get a boulder down there to crush the platform, and then the player thinks, "well, how do I do that?" And they work backwards to figure it out.

See, the problem with an extremely complex and convoluted puzzle is that when you do make a mistake, you don't know what to do to fix the mistake... you simply know you did something wrong, and you go back and do it all completely differently hoping that you get a lead. No offense to Midnight IX or anything That's basically my philosophy when it comes to level design. Basically, too hard is usually not fun. There are a few other reasons why this cave ended up working really well but that just happened spontaneously.

(Spoilers) Hmm.... That suspicious boulder you're talking about... originally if you pushed the boulder to the left, you'd get a heart crate... but I figured that that was WAY too obviously suspicious, so I instead made it a path to the bottom and added the steel dynamite crates way over to the right so as to make it seem like a legitimate path. I figured that I needed to lure the player into thinking that it was the right thing to do. The heart crate was just way too suspicious.

I'm personally really proud of this cave. A lot of the design for it was pretty random, actually, but I won't bore you with too many details on how I connected it all. All you need to know is that it ended up working out.

So does this cave make up for my extremely long hiatus? Hehe.

OOPS, I made a slight mistake in the initial design! There were actually two ways to complete the cave, and I only intended on one way. So I fixed it... I know I know, you already gave the cave massive praise. Eh. But this was really bothering me. Since you probably did it the "wrong" way initially and you probably don't want to play it again, I'll say what you have to do this time in spoilers: with my edit, you're not allowed to hit the arrow crate that spills the boulders from the right side until the very end.

Edit again: updated for, I hope, the last time. Spoilers: Now the boulder looks less suspicious.

The boulder puzzle to the left of the start didn't give me too much trouble. I looked at it for a minute, and decided that there was only one alignment that I wasn't sure wasn't gonna work, so I tried that first. The thing that threw me off the most was this boulder at the top that you'll never see (except on the map), unless you don't hit this one arrow until the end. Once I noticed that boulder, I had it figured out fairly quickly. It took a few more tries after that 'cause I was trying to race the wrong arrow at first.

Anyway, there's one thing that I think you should change, real quick: The water level should be six squares to the left. I don't think that that'd mess anything up, and it'd look way better. I did find one bug, though, but I have no idea how one'd go about fixing it: If you do everything correctly, but then destroy the lower of the two water crates, you won't ever have to worry about the top boulder being destroyed. It's gonna make stuff go down a little bit weirdly (this one boulder has to be pushed into position early, and you have to get stuck in a corner to dislodge a boulder), but it should still end up being possible. Basically, I found a way to not have to hit that one arrow at the very end, which you're supposedly "not allowed" to do..

Anyway, thoroughly enjoyable. You came back and made TWO good caves? Somebody make sure the sky's still there, while I check on the pigs.

Hmm, well I completed the cave, but according to CSD, I didn't beat it properly. Having read Quirvy's post up there, I went in to the cave expecting an obscure secret route, so I guess it may have been that I was looking extra hard for any possibility of one from the get-go and didn't notice a "normal" route.

Anyway, it was an entertaining puzzle, even if I didn't do it right (maybe I'll try to find the correct solution later). The semi-puzzles on the left side of the map (the boulders and the one with the arrows) were nice and simple, and fun to solve. I didn't like the top boulder being completely out of sight, but the map is available for anyone to see so whatever.

In conclusion, good cave. One of the better puzzle caves I've played recently.

Yeah, I didn't really notice the "normal" route either... For me the secret one was the most obvious. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it.

And you mean you did that whole thing with destroying the one water crate? What you gotta to is, after you hit this upper-left arrow, quickly run over to the right and push the last boulder into place (you've have pushed the other two and most of the third already), and then go back and knock the all the boulders down. If that makes any sense... I'm sure somebody will release a walkthrough eventually...

Lol, DBK, you should record this and submit for best walkthrough, before it's too late!

Oh, I think I see what you're saying... Yeah, I'm not surprised I didn't think of that; I didn't really consider that there would be any speed aspects involved with that part (although I should have). So with that mindset, I guess the water-crate thing was the only solution I could have come up with.

Nice improvised spoiler-tags by the way, DBK.  

The only thing stopping me from giving me a 10/10 is that you can't see the top boulder. For me, this is one of the best caves of the year, without any doubt. It took me three tries to figure out that I had to "rush" to the ladder though

And how come nobody +Karma'd this level!?

CSD: I fixed the water level, and fixing that other bug was surprisingly easy, heh.

CSD and Isa: I think the boulder problem the best I could. Now you look up and you'll see a boulder on a dynamite crate... hmm, that doesn't look right.

I was thinking of blocking off access with a dynamite wall, lol, but your way works too.

I think you might have made a mistake when you made that edit? The arrow that used to destroy the boulder, doesn't look like it will anymore? And also, I no longer have to push the boulders into position before hitting the arrow that knocks it down, because a metal crate doesn't fall down after (one used to fall before, right?), though I still have to quickly run over. You know, it just occurred to me that, if I had had the sound on, I would have heard the sound of a boulder getting destroyed, so even without looking at the map, I could have known that there was something going on.

Hmm, I don't care too much about having to set them up, haha. It's not a big deal.

Lol that was one of my favourite parts. But I mean, how hard would it be to put a metal crate on top of the boulder?

VERY HARD. OK. FINE. I'LL DO IT.

Lol, but the main point of my post was this:

yeah yeah. Got that too Yeah what I was doing was shifting down the entire top part so the player could see what was going on up there.

   And I hate the way those platforms look, lol. I was remaking the HATPC level codes, so I had to pay attention to the platforms, and now whenever I see incorrect use of left/right platforms, it sticks out like a sore thumb. I think dando edited them out of a previous version, but your offline copy appears to have brought them back.

Lol, fix that, and then I'm done.

How do you get the treasure below the door?

finally beat this. Great level. It took me a while to figure out, and my self esteem was hurt when everyone made it look like it was easy but then I looked at the code.

Compact, simple and challenging enough to keep me perplexed for a good half an hour (about as long as I ever want to play a cave). An inspired puzzle cave that should have lasting power in terms of staying in peoples' memories. And I beat it too, which means that I don't have to guess what it was like as is the case with most caves.

Not quite worthy of a 9 due to the oversimplicity of some areas (the left side in particular), but the overall puzzle is top-notch. Gets maximum enjoyment marks too. Nice work and nice to see some old school cavemaking back again!

(I enjoyed it so much, I'm willing to make a video walkthrough if you want me to)

Took me FOREVER to beat. The puzzles were amazing and I liked the cave.

Yeah I'm really really old school.

I guess now that there aren't any bugs or alternative ways to beat the cave that it's a lot lot harder?

Can I make a walkthrough (video) of this anytime soon?

Sure! I don't have recording software and I'm too lazy to get it... so have fun!

I'll do it a few days from now. I don't wan't what happened to the endless evergreens walkthrough to happen again: http://interguild.org/videos/viewvid.php?vid=584&show=newest