The Enchanted Cave 2

I went into The Enchanted Cave 2 expecting something slight - a browser game dressed up for Steam. What I got was a quietly ruthless loop that ate three hours before I noticed. Dustin Auxier built the whole thing solo, and it carries that single-mind clarity that only one-person projects manage: nothing is there by accident, nothing overstays its welcome. The structure is a 100-floor, procedurally generated dungeon split into roughly ten-floor chunks, with a shop acting as a checkpoint at the bottom of each stretch. Combat is turn-based and dead simple - walk into a monster to trade blows, tap a spell from the hotbar, burn a potion if you're desperate. The real decision-making lives elsewhere: in the Escape Wings sitting in your inventory. Use them and you surface with your experience, your gold, your artifacts (gold-bordered gear that survives the exit), and your character level intact. Die, and the run's loot turns to dust. That single mechanic drives everything. The skill tree forks into three paths - mage, warrior, and alchemist/enchanter - and you can mix freely, though a magic-forward build that reaches the Transmute and Heal spells early has real staying power. Transmute lets you permanently keep any normal item by converting it to artifact status, which makes the spell feel almost broken once you understand it. The enchanting system layers on top: gather crafting ingredients from chests and enemy drops, hit an in-cave forge, and imbue weapons or armour with bonuses like elemental defense, HP regen, or attack scaling. Each item holds two enchantment slots, and replacing one means choosing what to sacrifice. These are small choices, but they accumulate into genuine investment. The town hub outside the cave is the weakest part. NPCs are sparse, their quest triggers are easy to miss since there's no journal or notification, and a handful of locked doors suggest ambitions that didn't quite make the cut. It's forgivable in a one-person project, but anyone expecting a rich overworld will be disappointed. The dungeon itself, though, delivers on mood. Grant Kirkhope - composer behind Banjo-Kazooie and GoldenEye 007 - wrote the soundtrack, and it earns every compliment it gets. The cave themes have a warmth and slight unease that suit the pixel aesthetic perfectly; you notice when the music loops because you wish it wouldn't. A note for Mac players: the game is not compatible with macOS Catalina or above, which effectively means most modern Macs cannot run it without workarounds. Windows and Linux players have nothing to worry about. The game sits at Very Positive on Steam with around 89% approval across several hundred reviews, which for a niche roguelite from a solo developer is a quiet kind of validation. Hardcore dungeon-crawler veterans may find the tactical ceiling lower than they'd like - monsters are stationary, aggro is non-existent, and the difficulty curve is gentle by genre standards. But that accessibility is also the point. This is a dungeon crawler that respects a short session and rewards patience over reflexes.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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