Hannah and the Pirate Caves - Trophy Guide

In this guide, I will inform you on the various techniques you'll need to utilize while playing Hannah and the Pirate Caves. Please note however, that I have not included a step-by-step walkthrough. If you are looking for that, please visit the petpage I designed, ~cinniminni22.

Now before we get started, I'd like to take a minute or two to get you more familiar with the game if you aren't already sure how it works.

You control a Usul named Hannah who is searching for treasure in a set of caves somewhere on Krawk Island. What you need to do is guide her through each cave, making sure to collect each and every treasure chest that is scattered throughout the cave. You can see how many chests you've collected and how many you need at the top of your screen. After you've collected all of the chests, you need to guide Hannah to the exit, which will take her to the next cave. There are 26 caves in all, including six tutorial levels and 20 other caves.

The controls are simple and common: use your left and right arrow keys to move to the left and to the right, use the up arrow key to look upward, use the down arrow key to crawl on the ground and to look downward, and use the spacebar to jump. However, when you are in the water, the up and down arrow keys move you up and down and don't let you look upward or downward.

On your trek through each cave, there will be obstacles trying to prevent you from making it to the exit. You begin the game with FOUR lives, not three as you may think by looking at the top of your screen. In this spot, you will see three hearts that are all brightly lit. After all three hearts lose their light, you will have one final life to use before your game is over. Of course, you can always collect bonus lives throughout the game, allowing you to make up for lives lost or increase your lives to more than four. If you collect all of the available bonus lives, you will have ten lives to use before your game will end.

Additionally, there are gem crates hidden somewhere in most levels. It is very important that you try to collect these because they award 5,000 bonus points at the end of the level for each one you collect. If you collect all of the gem crates, you will have 115,000 extra points at the end of the game, so this is VERY important!

Now before we get into the specific techniques, I'd like to explain a few more things.

The obstacles that I mentioned earlier that you will have to deal with appear in many different forms and in all levels of the game in some way or another.

First of all, there are spikes, which can be found on both the floor and ceiling. Touching these will result in you losing a life. However, there are a few ways to destroy these spikes if you are careful. First, if you drop an object of any kind, such as a boulder or crate, on some spikes, the spikes will be destroyed. You can also shoot them with an arrow or toss a stick of dynamite at them.

Speaking of which, you need to be extra careful around these objects. If a boulder falls on you, you get hit by an arrow, or if you get hit by some dynamite, you will lose a life. So be sure that you are safe when around these objects!

There are also various enemies that you will encounter throughout the game. If you touch these enemies, you will lose a life. Unlike the spikes, however, you CANNOT destroy enemies at all, and the enemies move back and forth throughout the cave, some on the ground and some through the air. Be VERY careful around enemies because there are quite a few of them that you will encounter.

Now that you more or less know how the game works, let's discuss some of the techniques you'll need to use in order to keep yourself safe and avoid losing many lives.

First of all, Hannah is very good at jumping, whether it is jumping upward or across a gap. To be exact, Hannah can jump over three squares of terrain and over four squares of empty space. However, she cannot make this jump diagonally (i.e. she cannot jump three squares high and four squares over in the same jump), so keep that in mind.

When you are swimming in the water, which you will be doing quite a lot of throughout the game, you need to be aware that Hannah has to breathe and cannot stay underwater forever. To know how much time you have left, look at the bubbles in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen. Once the bubbles all pop, you only have a second or so to find some air or else you will lose a life.

Something else to remember when you are in the water is that if you press the spacebar AND the up arrow key you will move very fast up to the surface, just be sure there aren't spikes waiting for you up there!

Some areas of water don't give you enough time to make it back to the surface in just one breath of air. In these cases, you will be provided with air pockets to help you breathe. An air pocket is a small space underwater that has some sealed off air, just look for a mini-surface with air above it.

Remember the gems and bonus lives I mentioned earlier? Well, in most cases, these objects aren't usually visible or laid upon the path that you will travel along. Instead, they are often located in hidden parts of the cave, only accessible by navigating your way through a 'secret area.' A secret area is a block or multiple blocks of space that appear to look like your typical terrain, but in fact you are able to walk through these secret areas, allowing you to find the hidden gems and bonus lives. You can spot a secret area by looking for blocks of terrain that have small fragments missing, allowing you to see through them somewhat. Secret areas are ESPECIALLY hard to spot if the terrain of the cave is purple, but very easy to spot when it is green. This means you must look extra carefully in the purple caves!

In the third tutorial level, Boulders, along with several other tutorial levels, you don't always want to follow the arrows and instructions exactly. If you take a different route (read my walkthrough guide, ~cinniminni22) you will be able to collect a gem, whereas if you follow the arrows and instructions you'll have missed out on this chance, so be sure to read the walkthrough when you play and don't get too caught up in the game!

When you are around wooden dynamite crates, remember that there are multiple ways to set them off. If you need the dynamite to move to the left or the right a certain difference then you should walk horizontally into the crate to send the dynamite flying. However, if you need the dynamite to blow up directly below where it is situated in its crate, then jump directly on top of it and then quickly move out of the way. This will send the stick flying up in the air before gravity grabs brings it back down to blow up somewhere below. Just remember though that since you will be directly above the crate when you set it off and the dynamite WILL fly upward for a moment, you DO need to move out of the way as quickly as you can.

Sometimes, you may find yourself in a situation where you have to jump through a platform and there are spikes waiting for you right away. If you jump normally, you may hit your head on the spikes. In order to avoid this, crouch down on the ground before you jump and Hannah won't jump as high, and she'll be able to avoid the spikes.

You'll get to try out a lot of these techniques in the tutorial levels, as they provide you with the opportunity to experience most of the situations that you will find yourself in once you get to the harder levels.

Well, at this point you should be better equipped to go out on your adventure through the Pirate Caves to try to bring home a nice shiny trophy! Before I wish you good luck and you go out on this journey however, I'd like to take one or two more minutes of your time to talk about the trophy itself and the type of scores that you'll need.

You SHOULD be able to get a gold trophy on the first day of the month with a score of around 250,000. If you are aiming for just a bronze, then a score of 175,000 or so should get the job done. However, these are just averages and you could end up needing more points than this to achieve your goal, so always go for as high a score as possible!

If you send an excellent score (say over 300,000 or 350,000), then not only will you earn 1,000 NP for that game and likely a gold trophy, but you have a chance of staying in trophy position for the rest of the month, which can earn you up to 750 NP per day. However, if you already have a trophy, then wait a while before sending another good score for the purpose of earning NP so other users can have a chance for a trophy on the first few days of the month.

Okay, now we are actually done for real! Remember that in addition to these techniques, you'll also need a step-by-step walkthrough in order to complete the game. If you would like to use my walkthrough that would be great, just visit it at ~cinniminni22. I wish you good luck achieving a super high score and earning yourself a gold trophy, now go out there and collect some treasure!