CaveRace is a maze-action game created in 1997 by Clemens Schotte and the original CaveRace team. Inspired by Dyna Blaster (Bomberman), it sends a miner into the caves of Eldora to collect treasure, open passages with bombs, and defeat an alien invasion.
The repository preserves every major CaveRace codebase—from the original MS-DOS game to the current Odin editions—together with their artwork, levels, build files, and version-specific documentation.
| Forest | Winter | Lava |
|---|---|---|
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CaveRace 2.1 is the current edition and recommended starting point. It brings the 25-cave CaveRace 2 campaign from the Windows Phone era to modern Windows and macOS through a from-scratch Odin and raylib rewrite. The installed game is branded CaveRace 2.
It includes four themed worlds, an interactive tutorial, two difficulty profiles, medal-based cave results, keyboard/mouse/controller support, remappable controls, accessibility-oriented presentation settings, and desktop and Store packaging.
CaveRace 1.5 is the modern edition of the original MS-DOS ten-cave campaign. It uses the same Odin/raylib foundation and is available for Windows and macOS for players who want the compact, original classic CaveRace experience.
Downloads, screenshots, and more background are available on the official CaveRace website.
| Story | Main menu | Controls |
|---|---|---|
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Clear a cave by destroying every alien. Along the way, collect gold, diamonds, and useful items hidden among the rocks.
Bombs are both tool and hazard. Their blasts break soft stone and defeat enemies, but can also destroy treasure, remove power-ups, and injure the player. Dense rock cannot be moved, so success depends on planning a route, placing a bomb, and reaching safety before it explodes.
The current desktop editions are fully offline and contain no accounts, advertising, in-app purchases, analytics, or online services.
Far out in space lies Eldora, a small planet whose people have built their lives around treasure-filled mines. Each day, miners venture underground to recover gold, diamonds, and other precious minerals.
Then aliens invade the caves, threatening Eldora's people and the riches they depend on. The miners' only practical defense is the same explosive equipment they use to open passages through rock.
You are one of those miners. Enter the infested caves, recover their treasure, and make Eldora's mines safe again.
Each preserved version has its own guide with the relevant toolchain, build instructions, controls, source layout, and compatibility notes.
| Version | Year | Platform and technology | Documentation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.2 | 1997 | Original MS-DOS release; Borland C and x86 assembly | 1.2 guide |
| 1.3 | 2002 | Windows port; Visual C++ and DirectX 8.1 | 1.3 guide |
| 1.4 | 2012 | Windows 8 Store app; C# and SharpDX | 1.4 guide |
| 2.0 | 2012 | Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox 360; C# and XNA 4.0 | 2.0 guide |
| 1.5 | 2026 | Classic ten-cave campaign; Odin and raylib for Windows/macOS | 1.5 guide |
| 2.1 | 2026 | 25-cave CaveRace 2 campaign; Odin and raylib for Windows/macOS | 2.1 guide |
Version numbers describe two related lines: 1.5 modernizes the original campaign, while 2.1 modernizes the expanded campaign introduced by 2.0.
CaveRace 1.2 targets an Intel 80386-compatible IBM PC running MS-DOS with a 320×200, 256-color VGA display (Mode 13h). It is written mainly in C with x86 assembly routines for memory and graphics, and was built with Borland C 3.1.
Marijn Schotte created the artwork on an Amiga with Deluxe Paint. The source art uses IFF (Interchange File Format); screens and 16×16 tiles were converted to raw indexed graphics with a shared 256-color RGB palette for the DOS game.
See the CaveRace 1.2 guide for historical build instructions, file formats, launch options, and cheats.
Original CaveRace team:
- Clemens Schotte — code and concept
- Marijn Schotte — artwork and concept
- Paul Bosselaar — documentation
- Paul van Croonenburg — documentation
- Harro Lock — code
From version 1.3 onward, CaveRace was developed by Clemens Schotte with artwork by Marijn Schotte.
NavaTron Game Studios. Copyright © 1997–2026 NavaTron B.V.
The source code is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Game content, artwork, music, and sound effects remain copyright NavaTron B.V.