How to play Dark Cavern online
- Move: arrow keys (your man keeps running until he hits a wall)
- Shoot: hold an arrow key in the direction you want to fire and press Space
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Difficulty: F4 toggles the left difficulty switch
Gameplay
You have five men, each entering through a trap door in the centre. Robots are the only enemies that shoot, and each hit costs a man. Spiders paralyse you for a moment, which gives the robots time to close in. Blobs slide through the tunnels and steal your bullets: the longer you touch one, the more ammunition you lose. Neither spiders nor blobs are worth any points.
You begin with 20 bullets and can only have one shot on screen at a time. Now and then a gun appears somewhere in the maze. Reach it and you get 10 more bullets, up to a maximum of 99. Run dry and you can only dodge until the next gun turns up.
The robots change colour as you shoot them. They start out purple; destroy one and the rest turn red, and if you shoot another before a replacement arrives they turn green, then yellow. Higher colours are worth more, and a yellow robot also gives you an extra man, up to nine.
| Robot | Points |
|---|---|
| Purple | 1,000 |
| Red | 2,000 |
| Green | 3,000 |
| Yellow | 5,000 + extra man |
There are two kinds of robot. One-headed robots only fire in the direction they face; two-headed robots can fire forwards and backwards. With the left difficulty switch on B the game starts with one-headed robots, and on A it starts with the tougher two-headed ones.
Tips
- Shoot quickly in a row. Hitting robots before replacements arrive pushes them up the colour ladder towards the 5,000-point yellow robots and extra men.
- Keep away from blobs when you are low on ammunition; even brief contact costs bullets.
- Watch where robots face. A one-headed robot cannot shoot behind itself, so approach it from the back.
History
Night Stalker was designed by Steve Montero and came out on the Intellivision in 1982. Dark Cavern followed on the 2600 later that year. The two games are not identical: the Intellivision original has bats and a safe bunker, while the 2600 version has bullet-stealing blobs and a trap door where each man enters. In PAL regions the same game was sold as Night Stalker, with the score shown above the playfield instead of inside it.
Similar games to play next
- Night Stalker – the PAL release of this same game
- Wizard of Wor – a maze shooter with a very similar feel
- Berzerk – shoot robots in a maze and escape before Evil Otto arrives
- Dark Chambers – a later maze game full of monsters to shoot