Cave Story for PC major update now available; adds two-player mode, mod support, enhanced visuals, and more

Nicalis has released a major update for the PC (Steam) version of Cave Story, which adds a two-player mode, mod support, enhanced visuals, and more.

Here are the details:

About the Update

This update finally brings all of the later console version additions to the Steam version of the game, including two-player co-op mode. Venture back into the caves—but this time, bring a friend!

You’ll see many visual elements have been overhauled with this update, with the addition of animated dialogue portraits for all characters, enhanced dynamic lighting and water effects, improved environment shading, widescreen support, and more.

As for gameplay, you’ll find a number of helpful tweaks and gameplay improvements have been made. A few spots have had their difficulty minorly tuned or streamlined (like stacking puppies!) plus a Sand Pit Challenge level has been added to the game’s bonus challenge mode.

Even if you think you’ve already seen all that Cave Story has to offer, with this update, the game now supports player-created mods for custom graphics packs, challenges, soundtracks and more.

And that’s not even everything. Check the patch notes below for the complete list of changes—and happy exploring!

Patch Notes

• Cave Story+ Switch on PC
  • Two-player mode
  • Famitracks soundtrack
  • Ridiculon soundtrack
  • Sand Pit Challenge
  • Jukebox
  • Widescreen
  • Animated and flipped dialogue portraits
  • Lighting system
  • Physical water
  • Water backgrounds
  • Map shading
  • Strafing
  • Skipping dialogue
  • Difficulty tweaks
    • Jelly stacking
    • Puppy stacking
    • Escape Booster’s pit
    • Easier Waterway cabin jump
    • Iron Bond acquirement tweak
  • Altered warehouse scene
• Modding support
  • Stackable mods
  • Lua API
    • Converted code
    • Unused code
      • NPCs 58 and 79
      • Various commented-out lines of code
  • Mods can add custom…
    • Graphics packs
    • Seasonal themes
    • Soundtracks
    • Sounds
    • Challenges
    • Fonts
    • Screen filters
  • Settings
    • Allow dialogue portrait flipping
    • Enable lighting system
    • Enable physical water
    • Adjust internal resolution
    • Change default player costume
  • Conversion of data blobs to JSON
    • Starting stage and event
    • Tables
      • Arms
      • Bullet
      • Caret
      • Music
      • NPC
      • Stage
    • Dialogue portrait animations
  • Custom bitmaps can now overlay (instead of replace) vanilla bitmaps
  • Per-room custom water backgrounds
  • 4x resolution textures
  • WAV sounds (instead of PixTone)
  • Unified shaded and unshaded map data
  • Merged challenge map tiles into main map tiles
  • Booster’s Lab fork
    • CS+ TSC commands
    • 2x sprite resolution
    • New PXM file format
    • Reads and writes JSON map metadata files
  • Debug mode
    • FPS counter (default)
    • NPC list (default)
    • Unlocked challenges (default)
    • Unlocked jukebox (default)
    • Holiday selection (options)
    • NPC hitbox viewer (swap-left and pause)
    • NPC code viewer (F8)
    • Invincibility & infinite booster code (swap-right and pause)
    • One-hit kill (jump and pause)
    • Credits cheat code (up, left, down, right, up, left, down, right, L1)
    • Costume unlock cheat code (up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, L1)
    • Fast-forward (swap-left and swap-right)
    • Swap controllers in 2P mode (F12)
  • New TSC commands
    • XX2
    • OUT
      • Changes the player’s outfit
  • Raised NPC limit from 512 to 1024
  • Raised maximum number of tiles per stage from 256 to 65536
  • Raised flag limit from 8000 to 10000
• Curly Story difficulty levels
• DSiWare Sanctuary Time Attack
  • Snake, Super Missile Launcher, and Life Pot
  • Alternate music in starting room
  • Bonus image upon completion
• Extra two-player costumes
  • Easy Mode Curly
  • Hard Mode Curly
  • Cave Story+ Quote (when using Classic graphics)
• Fixes
  • Unobscured dialogue portraits
  • Restored missing features
    • Scrolling damage numbers
    • White circles replacing “=”
    • Text box scrolling text
    • “THANK YOU” stars Easter egg
  • Centred boss arenas
  • Missing translations fixed
  • Stage name drop-shadows fixed
  • Text drop-shadow color fixed
  • Missile graphics corrected
  • Animated dialogue portraits in challenges
  • Improved sprite-work
    • Seasonal graphics support
    • Updated credits illustrations
    • Boss Attack uses native Classic graphics
    • NPC sprite improvements
  • Improved Organya playback
  • Improved Remastered soundtrack
  • Updates from Freeware version 1.0.0.4 to version 1.0.0.6
  • Modding-related fixes
• Recreated official English sprites
• Incorporated unused dialogue portrait animations
• CRT screen filter
• HD Japanese font
• Challenge taglines
• Vastly-improved controller support
  • Button icons
  • Key icons
  • Custom controller bindings
    • Bindings for each player
    • Separate bindings for controllers and keyboard
  • All controllers control player one in single-player mode
  • Automatic player controller allocation in two-player mode