Cave Story+ just got an unexpected update on Steam

Polygon RSS Feed✍ Tomas Franzese📅 April 12, 2026(about 7 hours ago)

Summary

The Steam version of Cave Story+ just got an update that added official mod support and many visual improvements from the Nintendo Switch port

Cave Story may be over 21 years old at this point, but a massive update for the Steam version of the influential indie game just made it worth revisiting. This unexpected patch brings a lot of visual improvements from the Nintendo Switch port of Cave Story+ to the PC version, and adds official mod support as well.

Although Cave Story is not quite as prominent in the gaming zeitgeist as it once was, it holds an incredibly important place in the history of indie games. First released for free online in 2004, Cave Story was one of the first viral indie games. Its level of polish and deeper-than-you'd-expect story punched above their weight in ways no solo-developed indie game had before. Cave Story played a critical role in establishing the indie gaming space as something gamers should care about, and indie games continue to impress and entertain over 21 years later.

Cave Story still holds up today, but its Steam version has left a lot to be desired for several years now. Titled Cave Story+, this version had barely been updated since its launch in 2011, not even getting many of the enhancements that its Nintendo Switch port added in 2017. This 2026 update finally changes that, adding the two-player co-op mode, a bevy of visual improvements like widescreen support, and mod support to the PC version of the game.

If Cave Story+ has been resting, uninstalled in the depths of your Steam library for over a decade, this massive update certainly makes it worth replaying in 2026. The visual improvements, gameplay tweaks, and mod support that come with this update make Cave Story+ on Steam now feel like the definitive version of this indie game classic.

The 2026 update for Cave Story+ will roll out for everyone on Monday, April 13, but you can access it now by entering the code "ModPizzaParty" in the Game Versions & Betas submenu of its Steam Properties menu. The full patch notes for this update are listed below.

CS+ Switch on PC
- 2-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
    - Arms
    - Bosses
    - Bullets
    - Carets
    - NPCs
    - Player
  - 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', allowing mods to switch between playable characters
Raised NPC limit from 512 to 1024
Raised maximum number of tiles per stage from 256 to 65536
- PXM file format has been expanded to allow this
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 2-player costumes
- Easy Mode Curly
- Hard Mode Curly
- CS+ Quote (when using Classic graphics)
Fixes
- Unobscured dialogue portraits (top and bottom rows are no longer missing)
- Restored missing features
- Scrolling damage numbers
- White circles that replace the '=' character in dialogue
- Text box scrolling text out of view instead of just disappearing
- HANK YOU' stars easter egg after the credits
- Centred Heavy Press and G-CLONE boss arenas
- Missing translation for Balrog's, Misery's, and the Doctor's descriptions in the normal credits
- Stage name no longer has two drop-shadows
- Text drop-shadows uses correct colour
- Level 2 and 3 missile graphics are no longer swapped in CS+ graphics
- Corrected centering of the '
Animated dialogue portraits in Challenges
- Wind Fortress
- Sanctuary Time Attack
Improved sprite-work
Challenges now support seasonal graphics
Updated credits illustrations in Classic graphics
Boss Attack uses native Classic graphics instead of downscaled Cave Story+ graphics
Various NPC sprite improvements, including an overhauled Heavy Press
Improved Organya playback
- Drums use linear-interpolation sampling instead of nearest-neighbour sampling
- Fixed panning of right channel being inverted
- Fixed track panning not being initialised (would make notes very loud when panning is not explicitly specified)
Improved Remastered soundtrack
- Last Cave (Hidden) has a unique version of the Last Cave theme
- Credits use a unique version of Mischievous Robot
- Corrected song looping:
  - Balrog's theme
  - Sand Zone theme
  - Labyrinth theme
  - Last Cave (Hidden)
  - Balcony
  - Mischievous Robot (Credits)
Updates from Freeware v1.0.0.4 to v1.0.0.6
- Behemoth rage effects
- Gravekeeper sound effects
- Closed chest flickering sprite and animation speed
Modding-related fixes:
- TSC commands
  - CAT now clears auto-turbo mode instead of setting it.
  - MYD supports events above 255
  - Game no longer corrupts when player has maximum weapons (8) or items (32).
  - Weapons no longer level-up to level 2 prematurely when EXP requirement is lower for level 3 than level 2.
  - NPC 150 can now use direction 10.
  - A line-break is no longer redundantly inserted at the end of a maximum-length line of text.
Recreated official English sprites from pre-release Cave Story
Incorporated unused dialogue portrait animations into the game
- Smiling Balrog, in Malco's room
- Coughing Toroko, in the warehouse
- Fist-clenching Itoh, when first talking to him
CRT screen filter
HD Japanese font
Challenge taglines
Vastly-improved controller support

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