Cadaver is an isometric adventure game by the Bitmap Brothers, originally released on the Amiga by . In the game you play Karadoc the dwarf.

Story and Levels

Cadaver I

In the original Cadaver, Karadoc, who is a gold-hungry dwarf and really just hopes to find a treasure, is on a mission to seek out and kill the necromancer Dianos, the sole remaining inhabitant of Castle Wulf.

Entering the castle via the sewers, Karadoc works his way up from the dungeons, through guard chambers, royal hall, king's private chambers and finally the battlements with Dianos's sanctum.

The game plays in five levels, and is unique for its age for being truly 3-d. Karadoc's main modus operandi is picking up, throwing and stacking objects. By piling up a number of boxes, bones or other items, it is possible to reach higher places. Karadoc can find and use a small number of weapons such as rocks and shuriken, but the main point of the game is puzzles.

The game is heavily scripted. The isometric objects can react to a variety of other objects; for instance, a poisoned key can be cleaned by dropping a vial of water on it, and potions can be enhanced by the potion booster spell. The game has a wide variety of puzzles requiring items to be found, brought and used in a variety of places. The puzzles sometimes require leaps in logic, and the game has plenty of secret areas, hidden spells etc.

Cadaver II

The game has a sequel named The Payoff. After defeating Dianos, Karadoc returns to the inn only to find his employers gone, and every living person within the city either dead or transformed into a monster. Seeking the cause behind this, the dwarf fights his way to the local temple, and finds the answers, and the remains of his employers, deep down in the crypts.

Gameplay is similar. Cadaver II has only four levels, but they are significantly larger than those of the first game, and the second level has a large number of monsters and scant possibilities to heal. The third level contains a true boss monster to fight; there are none such in the first game.

Demos and inofficial sequels

There are 3 levels besides the 9 from the two official releases, 2 of them were released as demos before Cadaver I ("Gatehouse" and "Temple"), and the third is of mysterious origins, and featurs Karadoc's death ("A Survive Supper").

Puzzles in Cadaver

There's a lot of diversity in the puzzles, and some are quite hard. For the most part, there is no specific order in which to solve puzzles. You are free to move around in the castles, and often you have to go back to rooms with new items you obtained, or because something changed. There are also often several possibilities to solve something, and you could circumvent some puzzles. For example, sometimes if you can not figure out how to make a monster disappear, you can just kill it. Or when you cannot open a certain gate because you can't figure out how to get the key, you can just run through the level, collected all possible items, and make a huge pile out of them. Then climb up the pile and jump over the gate - and the level is solved, just with a quite empty backpack. In short, this game is a lot of fun, even if it can be frustrating to not figure out a puzzle.