Cadaver: The Payoff!

Game Info
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Developer: The Bitmap Brothers
Publisher: Image Works
Year of Release: 1991

Game Review & Impressions
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For one of my first longplays of 2026, I found myself revisiting the world of Cadaver, the isometric dungeon-crawling adventure game from The Bitmap Brothers. Cadaver was, I suppose, a contemporary evolution of Knightlore, Head Over Heels, and so many other isometric walk-and-seek games so popular during the 8-bit gaming boom. However, being exclusive to more powerful Amiga, Atari ST and PC, Cadaver clearly took advantage of those platforms superior processing and graphical capabilities, resulting in some of the most beautifully imagined fantasy dungeons yet seen in a video game. The artwork Dan Malone created for both Cadaver and The Payoff are truly peerless, undoubtedly his best work on the Amiga and Atari ST, and the chief reason why Cadaver is remembered. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that, even 30 years later, Cadaver features some of the best 2D pixel artwork ever created for a video game.

Cadaver: The Payoff -- an expansion disk containing 4 new levels -- was created in the wake of the original game's launch, leveraging the ACL scripting engine programmer Steve Kelly had developed for the original game. The new levels are sizeable, packed to the gills with mind-bending puzzles, and promised to deliver more of what Cadaver fans found so appealing.

The story picks up after the finale of the original game, with Karadoc the dwarf returning victorious from his mission to defeat the necromancer Dianos. Eager to cash in, he returns to the local tavern to collect his reward, only to find it largely deserted. Those who hired him are missing, and so his only hope of claiming what is due is to find the missing patrons.

From the outset, The Payoff is really a straightforward extension of the base game. The mechanics, level design and combat remains unchanged, although Karadoc does get to meet and interact with a small selection of human characters, something which wasn't really explored in Cadaver. Each of the levels features rooms interconnected by doors, pits and teleports, and finding the exit to the next level involves solving a hugely convoluted and complicated series of puzzles. The solution to those puzzles typically involves locating and determining the use of items scattered throughout the rooms of the dungeon, many of which are secreted within chests and strongboxes, and you'll spend a large proportion of your time searching for the keys which open them.

It's these puzzles that are my biggest issue with this expansion; if anything, they're even more difficult than the original. The game doubles down on all the tropes and quirks that made Cadaver so impenetrable, resulting in new levels of confusion and frustration. A good example is the third level, which involves the admittedly clever use of metal caskets to protect certain magic objects from the end-of-level guardian. The use thereof makes sense in hindsight, but there's never a hint of suggestion that the boxes should be used in this manner. It's also entirely possible to soft-lock progress if, as I did, you leave the caskets in part of the level you can't return to. Making such a mistake leaves you with no option but to replay the entirety of the level again, something that proves immensely frustrating.

I suppose that Cadaver and The Payoff were meant to be long-term endeavours. The fact it's possible to save your game at any point is significant in that regards. It expects you to fail repeatedly, until you eventually deduce a solution to the problem at hand. My fear is that, for the average gamer, the solutions proved too onerous -- the juice not being worth the squeeze. The combat is still nothing more than hurling rocks and objects at monsters, some of which are completely impervious to anything other than specific spells, and always felt rather perfunctory. The games are, I think, designed to cater to a more mature audience, typically teens or young adults who had the cognitive resources and resilience to tackle games such as these, not to mention sufficient time.

I don't wish to denigrate The Payoff or Cadaver to any great extent; I can still have appreciation for the technical and artistic sophistication, even if I don't particularly enjoy playing the actual games. My own summation matches those of Matt Bielby, who summed up Amiga Power magazine's thoughts on The Payoff:

"Great for Cadaver fans, or sod all value to the rest of us."

Related Longplays & Videos
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    • Cadaver Longplay (Amig...  

Chapters
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0:00:00 Intro
0:01:00 Level 01
0:29:22 Level 02
1:11:26 Level 03
1:38:39 Level 04
2:04:34 Ending