Crystal Caves Download PC

Crystal Caves is a side-scrolling platform video game, developed and published by Apogee Software. It was originally going to be released in September 5, 1991 but was delayed for a month.

The game was distributed under the Apogee model, meaning it was divided into three episodes with the first available as shareware, which designer Frank Maddin said "worked pretty well for the time."

Plot

Mylo Steamwitz, a down-on-the-luck space trader, formulates his latest get-rich scheme by buying a farm rich in a popular species (twibbles) to meet market demand. To raise enough money for the farm, and to pay off his creditors, he flies to the perilous caves in the Altair System to mine precious crystals. Having failed in his farming businesses due to miscalculations, he decides to buy a solar system and make it a vacation resort. He heads back to the perilous Crystal Caves for enough crystals to trade and buy the solar system.

Development

Crystal Caves was inspired by Miner 2049er. The main character's name, "Mylo Steamwitz", was coined by George Broussard and was meant to sound like a loser's name. Most graphics were created by Frank Maddin.

Development on Crystal Caves began back when George Broussard was still releasing games under the name Micro F/X. A few months into the development (when about 50-70% of the game was complete) Broussard joined Apogee and Crystal Caves became an Apogee product.

On October 24, 2005, 3D Realms (formerly Apogee) released a maintenance patch to fix a bug in the game which set the player's computer's clock backwards 100 years after playing on Windows XP.

Gameplay

Mylo Steamwitz enters a cavern with the goal of collecting all of the crystals within, while contending with hostile alien creatures, environmental hazards, and other obstacles. There is no penalty for exiting a cavern prematurely, but the cavern must then be started from the beginning when the player returns. Many caverns (particularly those later in the game) require that Mylo manipulate or reverse gravity or work in the dark to complete them.