Crystal Caves

Plot

Mylo Steamwitz, a down-on-his-luck space trader, travels to the planet Altair to collect crystals from its mines to fund his latest get-rich-quick scheme. In the first episode, he aims to buy a twibble farm, as twibbles are the hottest new pet in the galaxy. He succeeds, but twibbles breed so quickly that the market becomes over-saturated, leaving Mylo with a planet overrun by them. After selling the farm at a loss, he returns to Altair to finance a slug farm, prompted by a war that created demand for medicinal slugs.

Business booms until the slugs burrow into an abandoned salt mine and perish. Inspired by a late-night infomercial, Mylo then collects crystals to buy an entire planetary system from Rip Eweoff, planning a vacation resort. Minutes after the purchase, the star goes supernova, destroying the system. Mylo builds a restaurant overlooking the resulting nebula, which becomes the hottest spot in the galaxy, finally making him millions.

Development

The game Crystal Caves took its inspiration from Miner 2049er. George Broussard came up with the name "Mylo Steamwitz" for the main character, wanting it to sound like a loser's name. Frank Maddin handled most of the graphics. Development started while Broussard was still putting out games under the Micro F/X label. After a few months, with roughly half to three-quarters of the game done, Broussard joined Apogee, and Crystal Caves became one of their titles. It was first planned for a September 5, 1991 release, but that got pushed back by a month. Much later, in October 2005, 3D Realms (the former Apogee) put out a maintenance patch. This fix addressed a bug that, when the game was played on Windows XP, would set the computer's clock back by a hundred years.