Crystal Caves (OpenCrystalCaves)

Game: Crystal Caves (DOS, 1991)

OpenCrystalCaves: an unofficial open-source reimplementation of the engine of Crystal Caves, Apogee Software’s 1991 platformer trilogy for MS-DOS, written in C++20 with SDL2. Simon Sandström (gurka) started it in 2017, and today it’s mostly developed by Cong (cxong), who publishes the Windows and Linux builds on GitHub and itch.io. It aims to be a better, modern remake that keeps the original’s gameplay, and its README lists, with side-by-side captures, what changes: enemies no longer detect the player through walls, horizontal momentum isn’t lost when bumping your head on the ceiling, lasers line up with the muzzle, levels restart from the menu, backgrounds have parallax, there’s an optional blue monochrome palette for dark areas, and the episode is picked from the main menu instead of through separate executables. For now only the first episode is playable, all the way through since 0.7.0 (August 29); 0.6.0 (April 4) had added saving and continuing a game, and since then the menu lets you choose an episode and work on the second one has started. It still lacks the high score table, key remapping, controller and mouse input, and some sound effects and messages, and the sound isn’t entirely accurate. The repository and the downloads include the files of the first episode in its shareware version, which Apogee distributed for free, so that episode plays without owning the game.

You needNothing for the first episode, which is included in its shareware version. For episodes 2 and 3, once they’re playable, the data files from your own copy of Crystal Caves (such as CC1.GFX) copied into the media folder, or the game installed from Steam or GOG. Plus 64-bit Windows or Linux; on macOS you have to build it.

How it gets to PC

Fan reimplementation

Console

MS-DOS

Original studio

Apogee Software

Year

1991

Author

Simon Sandström (gurka), Cong (cxong)

Stars

93

Last activity

2026-10-31 · today

Latest version

0.7.0 · 2026-08-29

License

MIT

Language

C++