[3] The game was created by Ron Gilbert, building on an idea that he has had for nearly twenty years about a cave that lures people into it to explore their darker personality traits.

Seven characters, drawn from across time and space and harboring dark secrets, have come to the Cave, believing they can "learn something about themselves and who they might become", as stated by Gilbert.

[4] In one example, a knight character goes to a princess for her amulet, which is the key to unlocking the pulling of the sword, who tells him to bring the treasure the dragon is guarding.

The knight then goes to the king with the amulet and is allowed to pull the sword, which was impossible at first due to the many rocks beneath it - however, our characters overcome it by blowing it with dynamite.

As the player controls the trio to explore the Cave, they collect objects and interact with the environment in a manner similar to an adventure game.

Exploration is described as being "Metroidvania"-like, where more of the Cave's tunnels and chambers become accessible as players collect objects in a manner similar to Metroid or Castlevania.

[13] The structure of the Cave within the game was designed to give each character a large unique area to explore, as to avoid the scenario where "you play it again and 95 percent is the same".

[12] While the game is part platformer, Gilbert's intent was not to make it a challenge to traverse the Cave noting that it is nearly impossible to die by missing a jump.

Instead, the platforming elements were added as to add variety to moving about the Cave, recalling that in the development of the Monkey Island games, players would become bored walking the same area over and over again.

[4] Gilbert did not want to penalize players for cheap or permanent character deaths, feeling that the death-and-respawn approach would be taken as "a minor set-back".

[6] Gilbert wanted the game to be playable by several people, recounting his youth experience of playing the text-based Colossal Cave Adventure with several of his friends, working together to solve puzzles.

[9] Gilbert had started with more ideas for playable characters, up to 20 or 30 based on common stereotypes including an opera singer and a CIA agent, but discarded these when he could not flesh out their reasons for wanting to go to the Cave, and keeping others that he considered his favorites.

This made it a challenge in writing the story, as the Cave acts as a narrator alongside other voiced non-player characters, but the main playable ones will remain silent.

[4] This also allowed Gilbert to keep a sense of mystery about the playable characters; if they were voiced, the dialog would have likely explicitly spelled out their reasons for being in the Cave, while their ultimate goals remain shrouded if they were silent.

[22] Windows users pre-ordering the title on Steam also obtained themed items for Team Fortress 2 based on the Hillbilly character's outfit.

[27] Several journalists acknowledged the wit and humor of Gilbert and Double Fine, but found puzzles to be too simple and require too much tedious traversing of non-dangerous areas of the cave.