How One Person Changed Indie Games Forever

These days, it’s not uncommon to stumble upon indie games that have been made by only one developer, with Stardew Valley and Papers, Please being some of the more popular examples. Cave Story certainly falls into that category as well but the far more interesting detail about its history is how it changed the perception of game developers around the world and paved the way for the indie game scene as we know it today.

To get the full picture of Cave Story’s development, we need to go all the way back to 1996 in a dormitory located in Japan. Here, a man named Daisuke Amaya was studying at a computer programming school in the hopes to learn how to make video games. As faith would have it though, his dorm neighbour, Nao Ueda, was actually the one to teach Daisuke how to develop games. Daisuke would quickly realize however, that joining a game company wouldn’t necessarily mean he would get the opportunity to make the sort of video games he wanted to make. So, he decided to make the most out of his time being a student to learn and collaborate on as many projects as he could, one of them being Doggy Wyvern.

Daisuke let go of the idea of pursuing game development as a career and instead started to treat it more as a hobby. Video games have always been a part of Daisuke’s life, especially 2D action games which he favors the most. He loves the Mega Man series, Final Fantasy V, The Final Fantasy Legend, Super Mario Bros, Metal Slug 2, a Japan-only game called Ihatovo Monogatari and many more.

As his love for the 2D action genre grew, so did his urge to take a first real shot at creating his own game. In 1998, two years after Nao started teaching him, Daisuke finally felt ready to start development on his dream video game project. A major inspiration during this time was Super Metroid but there was one thing that bothered the young aspiring developer while playing the classic SNES game. “The character wasn’t cute enough. Games have various kinds of ‘fun’ and for me, ‘cute’ is one thing I cannot separate from ‘fun’. The word ‘cute’ is the result of many techniques other than those of appearance. The movement, the background music, the sound effects — these all express cuteness.”

Shortly after starting the project however, Daisuke realized he still lacked the proper technical abilities to make his vision for a cute metroidvania game a reality. Therefore, he put it on hold for three months to give himself the chance to make a smaller game to get more acquainted with all the technical aspects surrounding both creating and releasing a video game by himself. This little tutorial project, titled Ikachan, was released as freeware in the year 1999 and later even found its way onto the 3DS.

The developer gained even more experience by creating his own C++ game engine, stage editor, sound effect editor and music format to streamline his development process for Cave Story. Meanwhile, Daisuke graduated school and had to start looking for a job. He figured it was best to choose a low-paying job that would afford him enough time to work on Cave Story, but would still earn him enough money to pay for food and a living space. With this goal in mind, the developer quickly landed a job at a small company that works on printers.

Being a one-person team, Daisuke was free to develop at his own pace. There were no company deadlines to hit and no milestones to reach, giving him unlimited freedom to execute his vision for the game. Despite that, Daisuke admits his game ideas are always very vague and that even when he draws up a plan, he almost never sticks to it. Most days after he came back home from work, he would spend time on Cave Story, drawing pictures and programming the various game mechanics, but on some days Daisuke didn’t work on the game at all. The indie developer took his time.

Before writing a single line of code or sketching any of the characters, Daisuke composed Cave Story’s theme soundtrack, despite not knowing much about music. Afterwards, development continued behind a computer screen and it started with a blank, black screen. The creator then added the main character and experimented with various movements. Daisuke considers this the most fun part of creating a video game. Just being able to control a character and make it move around. Once that part was implemented, he was able to better visualize what to add next. Things like backgrounds, interactable items, NPC characters, all slowly built upon each other, Daisuke explained. The scale and polish of Cave Story would eventually grow much higher than the creator ever imagined.

Fun fact: the title “Cave Story” was chosen as a placeholder name for the project during development. However, Daisuke grew to like it over the years and felt the simplicity of the title was perfect for the game. He first came up with the name when he was building platforms for one of the level designs. The more platforms Daisuke added, the more it became an enclosed space, reminding him of a cave.

Over the next two years, the developer worked on a beta version of Cave Story that was quite different from the indie darling we know today. “At first I was thinking of a game that required careful bullet/ammunition management; take down enemies then use the collected money to obtain more ammunition. It was that type of game.” The player would gradually get more and more ammunition as the game progressed, eventually even unlocking access to unlimited ammo. The unlimited bullet prototype felt so good to play that Daisuke believed his idea was a success, to the point he started having doubts about restricting bullets in the earlier parts of the game. Players were also able to control a frog character in the beta to traverse levels but this concept was entirely scrapped in the final release.

Even though the beta version was almost finished, from the intro all the way to the final showdown in the game, Daisuke was considering scrapping everything he had built so far. It’s important to note that in the beginning, the developer was creating Cave Story just for the sake of creating. Not really thinking if other people would like it, much less care about its story or characters. He merely felt like making his own game. However, that all took a turn when Daisuke showed the beta version to his old dorm neighbor, Nao, who had some criticism.

Some parts of the beta just weren’t fun according to Nao. Daisuke took his friend’s criticism to heart and this further motivated him to start from scratch. “So the total years spent in creating Cave Story was five years, out of which two years was me just creating it — but I scrapped what I had created. The rest was spent trying to get the audience to like what I had created. That’s why the games that I make are something that I want people to enjoy rather than me creating just to create.”

Having players go through tutorial levels is a very common practice when designing a game, but Daisuke actually isn’t a fan of those. Instead, he opted for a more organic approach that lets players feel like they’ve solved problems on their own. Much like the levels in the Mega Man and Metroid series, both franchises that inspired Cave Story. For example, the very first level features two pathways, but one is inaccessible to the player. By exploring the other path and grabbing a certain item, the player can free up the pathway that is blocked. None of this information is communicated to the player in the hopes to provide a more satisfying experience.

The design of the main character, Quote, is nothing short of iconic and that’s no coincidence. Quotes’ appearance was heavily inspired by Marios’ design. Both characters have a big head with a small body, allowing them to magnify their expressions and movements. Daisuke also made sure that Quote would stand out from the many dark backgrounds featured in the game by giving the character a bright color palette. The red and white colors were also applied to a lot of the secondary characters so that they were all easily recognizable against the Cave-like areas. Daisuke wanted players to project themselves onto Quote, which is partially why the main protagonist has amnesia. Just like the player, Quote doesn’t know anything about the world or its inhabitants, giving gamers the chance to discover everything alongside him. 

Daisuke’s inspiration for the characters and setting would come from all sorts of places, sometimes without rhyme or reason. For example, one of the more popular characters, Balrog, was inspired by a bar of soap. While the indie developer was surely able to sketch out his ideas for all the characters and areas, his ability to create in-game art was still limited. His decision to go with a retro art style certainly helped in that regard however, since he was able to more easily learn how to draw pixel art. He briefly considered using 3D graphics instead, but doing that all by himself didn’t seem realistic to him. Daisuke used a freeware tool called IDRAW3 to create all the sprite art.

During the game’s five year development cycle, Daisuke got married and decided to raise a family. This naturally had an impact on his free time as well as his priorities. “There is an order of priorities for me, that’s: Family > Myself > Work > Hobbies.” Time spent creating Cave Story now took place mostly at night, after taking care of his family and doing house chores.

After about four years of development, the indie action platformer was finally in a more finished state. The Japanese developer invited his friends to playtest the game and he made tweaks based on their input. A lot of the final steps also involved turning all the individual parts into a cohesive whole. This entire process definitely made the game better but Daisuke described this stage of development as annoying. He explained that coming up with new game mechanics and implementing them was the fun part, but making it all fit together in the end took far too much time and effort as he would have liked.

The moment Cave Story was fully completed also didn’t bring as much joy as the developer was expecting. Daisuke had to work very long hours during those last hectic moments of development, hoping to feel immense happiness and exhilaration upon completing his project but he was only left with a feeling of relief. For a while, the indie developer even considered giving up on game development entirely, since the stress of completing Cave Story had been a little too much.

On December 20th, 2004 Cave Story was released on the internet and Daisuke chose to put it online for free. He simply didn’t want to deal with any related business aspects and instead found it much more important that as many people as possible would be able to play his game. “I wanted to invite other people into the world I had made. I had felt many things through playing many games; I wanted someone to feel something by playing my game.” For that same reason, Daisuke was very concerned with the game’s file size and he did his absolute best to make sure that the system requirements to run it properly were as low as possible.

Because the indie game was released as freeware, anyone with a computer and internet access was able to download Cave Story’s files. Lots of modders took this opportunity to port the game to many different systems, including TI graphing calculators.

What’s perhaps the most interesting thing about Cave Story’s release, is how it was able to become such a widespread success. For a long time, no one really knew who was behind the game’s development, as Daisuke was only known by his handle “Pixel” at the time of release. He had no budget for marketing and made no attempts of his own to spread the word about his metroidvania game. Furthermore, social media was still in its infancy in 2004 so making people aware of newer independent games wasn’t as easy back then as it is now.

If anything, it speaks to the sheer quality of the game. Coupled with the fact that the game was made by one mysterious developer, people, including game critics, couldn’t help but be impressed and talk about it on the internet wherever they could. Outlets such as Game Informer and Destructoid praised Cave Story for it’s compelling artwork and story, even going as far as comparing it’s game design to that of developers like Shigeru Miyamoto. In 2006, the game ranked number one in Swedish gaming magazine Super Play’s list of the 50 best freeware games of all time. Additionally in 2016, Cave Story came in at number 14 in USgamer’s The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list.

It’s impact on the indie game industry also cannot be emphasized enough. In 2008, Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine said the following about Cave Story’s legacy: “The burgeoning Western indie game scene owes a tremendous debt to Japanese pioneers like Studio Pixel, whose freeware hit Cave Story proved that with sufficient vision, skill and passion, a single developer can still craft a deep, compelling action game.” Lots of game developers and journalists believe the success of Cave Story paved the way for indie games like Braid, Super Meat Boy, Hollow Knight, Fez and more. On top of that, the resurgence of Metroidvania games is also partially attributed to Daisuke’s indie game, which showed the world that the metroidvania genre is far from dead.

Four years after the game’s release, Daisuke was contacted by developer and publisher Nicalis. The company was interested in porting and publishing Cave Story to platforms such as WiiWare and Steam. At first, Daiske felt uneasy about the idea of telling other people how to adapt his work to fit more modern systems with a higher resolution. However, once the Japanese developer saw some of Nicalis’s examples, the creator was on board. In 2008, they decided to start porting the game to the Wii first. It was quite an intricate process and both parties took great care in respecting the original, while also enhancing and expanding the experience for a modern audience.

Although Daisuke wasn’t personally involved with any of the programming or composing the updated soundtrack, he was still a very active member of the development team. For the most part, he recreated the new character artwork, offered his direction, approved each step, checked the new official translation and answered any questions related to the project. Leading up to the port’s release, the developer, after several years of staying anonymous, finally felt comfortable enough to reveal himself to the world.

The enhanced version was released in 2010 on the WiiWare service and featured updated character designs, remixed music and extra game modes. Daisuke was reportedly very pleased with the final result, a sentiment shared by most critics who praised the new artwork and updated control scheme for the Wii remote. Some reviewers did take issue with the new soundtrack, recommending people play the game with the original music instead, which can be toggled in the menu screen. There were also some people that thought the 12 dollar price was a bit much for a port of a game that was released for free and can still be downloaded free of charge today. Others went the opposite way and said they were happy that Daisuke was finally earning money from his creation that is absolutely worth its price. Cave Story was also released on the DSi in 2010, but it lacked many of the new features present on the Wii version.

After the success on the Wii and DSi, Daisuke and Nicalis began work on two separate versions of the indie classic, Cave Story 3D and Cave Story+. The former was completely built from the ground up with 3D graphics and specifically designed for the Nintendo 3DS, while the latter is an enhanced PC version containing all the extra features of the WiiWare version, as well as additional features including an extra level and the Machine Gun Challenge. Since Cave Story+ was more of a port, most of Daisuke’s time and effort went into the 3DS remake and the prospect of essentially building the game from scratch again excited him.

When asked by Gamasutra what led to the decision to bring Cave Story to the 3DS he had this to say: “The main reason is to get back to my roots, to what the original was about and what I wanted to express and I thought it was possible on the 3DS. Also, by completely updating the graphics, I wanted to make something completely new, as well. Regarding the music, I wanted to make it very close — actually the same — as the original PC version, but at the same time I wanted to make something completely new that would fit the new 3D world.”

Daisuke was as heavily involved as he was with the Wii port, if not more, and provided valuable feedback throughout the whole process. Furthermore, he helped draw some of the necessary artwork for the characters and setting and asked the other artists if they could recreate his drawings in 3D as close as possible to his own drawings. Besides these two new versions of Cave Story, Daisuke was also working on some other game projects and it became more difficult to combine all of that with his full time programming job. Therefore, in 2011, he decided to leave his job at the printer company to live out his dream of being a full time indie developer.

His colleagues were worried he wouldn’t be able to provide for himself and his family by solely making games. Not that they doubted his skills, but rather, they weren’t sure if it was a financially stable job. However, now that Cave Story was actually being sold on the Wii and DSi, with new versions for PC and 3DS on the way, the indie developer was making enough money to embrace game development full time.

Later in 2011, both Cave Story+ and Cave Story 3D were released and the 3DS version especially was met with mixed opinions. Overall, most reviewers didn’t think the 3DS version was bad by any means, but perhaps more unnecessary than anything else, knowing that the original version is still available to download and the fact that Cave Story+ is a cheaper version compared to the 40 dollar price tag of Cave Story 3D. Many people also agreed the original pixel art and the updated graphics in the Nintendo and Steam versions are superior to the 3D models. Cave Story+ was later ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2017 and added a local co-op mode to the experience and for the first time ever, not including Cave Story 3D, received a physical release.

Despite the somewhat mixed opinions about the 3DS version, Daisuke himself was just happy that his game was getting in the hands of more gamers than ever before. He recalls feeling very lonely making the original freeware version, but he was always imagining people being happy playing his game. He never expected Cave Story to become as big as it did, especially because he geared it more towards the Japanese hardcore gamer audience. Once the indie game had reached a worldwide audience, Daisuke was really surprised to see western players embracing Cave Story.

More recently, Cave Story was involved in a bit of a controversy. In November 2020, Nicalis issued a DMCA takedown against the Cave Story Engine 2 Github project, which is a free custom engine that allows users to create their own version of the indie classic. The publisher/developer claimed that the project uses the source code of its own version of Cave Story. This incident caused some industry professionals to defend the existence of fan made projects such as the custom engine, as long as they’re based on the original freeware version, since it’s assumed this should be outside Nicalis’ rights.

One of the developers of the fan project told Nintendo Life that Nicalis owns the Cave Story IP, making the DMCA takedown notice legitimate. The developer further explained that the “burden of proof” rests on the Cave Story Engine 2 to prove it is a fair use exception. Additionally, the people involved with the fan made engine didn’t think there was any ill will from Nicalis and said they were approaching the company to discuss the matter further. 

It’s worth noting that the Cave Story Wiki states that the Cave Story IP is only licensed to Nicalis and that Daisuke is still the rightful owner to this day. Whatever the case may be, at the time of making this video, the engine’s github repository is still unavailable due to the DMCA. It should also be said that this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened. Back in 2019, Nicalis issued a DMCA against a Kickstarter campaign that was trying to fund a port of Cave Story for the Xbox One. Neither Nicalis or Daisuke have further commented on the ownership situation as of yet.

Outside some of the main characters appearing in other games like Crystal Crisis and Blade Strangers, no other versions or sequels have been announced thus far. It’s quite possible we may never see a new installment. Back in 2011 during an interview with Gamesradar, Daisuke said that there’s a very good chance we’ll see a sequel but ever since then, he hasn’t spoken much about a potential follow-up. Instead he’s been working with a small team to create completely new games such as Kero Blaster and Pink Hour.

From treating game development as a hobby so he could create the games he wanted to make, to developing one of the most influential indie games of all time, Daisuke became a legendary figure in the gaming industry who’s now a full time developer. Daisuke Amaya has come a long way. What he originally lacked in technical ability, he made up for with pure persistence and passion, all the while, never losing sight of his creative vision. The success of Cave Story gave him the confidence to keep creating games and to try to delight people with his experiences. “I cannot say if it means I’ll be able to make another game which is as good as Cave Story. All I can do is try my best. So that is what I will do.”