Under The Island

An excellent Zelda-like that is probably more geared towards a younger or inexperienced audience. It's not overly challenging but I still found it fun to explore, meet all of the townsfolk, complete all of the quests, unlock all of the upgrades, and unlock most of the achievements. It was definitely worth the time and money, and I'd love to see a sequel!

It's a really good Zelda-like game. I would buy it again. The demo version goes up to the end of the first dungeon, but unfortunately, you can't carry over your save data from the demo.

It's a fun little old school links awakening style action adventure with light puzzle mechanics. Mostly playing this on my phone via gamenative. Plays really well.

Solid game! The classic Zelda influence is incredibly present, even if the store page is content to describe it as purely "90's nostalgia" for the sake of comparison. here's the review: Some things it did well: - the game is just fun! its colorful, the music is good, and there's a lot going on. The critical path is 5 dungeons long, but I estimate that the work I did purely to progress the critical path was about a third of my total play time. The rest was spent exploring the world, finding collectibles, secrets, and hidden paths and otherwise just having a nice time. - Despite the clear Zelda influence, the game has a lot of its own ideas and they're pretty good. The shovel being a dual purpose unlock, as well as being really clearly signposted as tool that would be good to have (without my guessing, honestly, exactly what it would be before getting it) is a great example. The bird is also a nice spin on the remote activation mechanic a lot of Zelda games have. Even being able to set bushes on fire has a unique spin here in that the fire mechanic has other functions besides. - Combat is also pretty good. It starts off feeling a little awkward, but it works narratively, and I think having access to the full set of combos and such right out of the gate would be overwhelming. - There are convenience features which are really nice to have in a game like this. The mole will give you hints in exchange for money, whenever you load in after exiting the game the character gives you a single text box description of where you are in the plot, and this hint can be repeated at any time by going to a save location. - It is possible to get every upgrade without finding every last heart coin (heart container) and every last upgrade material, which is nice because some of these are pretty hard to find! - there are lots and lots of hidden shortcuts, and they're all very rewarding to find, as well as making traversal much quicker, even outside of the fast travel system. - The puzzles are rarely difficult (the hardest was, for me, the laser pushing puzzle) but they do a good job of making you feel clever when you DO get them without frustrating or taking too long to solve. Things it didn't do as well: - There are a decent number of tightrope walking puzzles, but the game uses full analogue movement, NOT eight directional movement. While this is great for navigating the world, it's less so for these puzzles. As keyboard controls always have you move at full speed, and my sticks never seem to keep me perfectly aligned when doing these segments under time pressure, the tightrope segments were always at least a little frustrating. - The game doesn't signpost non-critical content very well. The only time I can recall that a noncritical item was hinted at in dialogue is when the forester camp mentions that [spoiler] he found some strange reading material[/spoiler] which you can [spoiler]take to the chicken to get one of the golden yarns[/spoiler]. Everything else was something I stumbled upon entirely by exploring the island; [spoiler]the Key-Rex, the magic wand, most of the heart coins and honey pots I found, [b]every single combo upgrade[/b], etc.[/spoiler]. While the exploration is fun, I would consider a lot of the stuff that I found doing this to be basically completely critical to the game. someone with less tolerance for the "burn every bush, bomb every wall" nature of early Zelda (which it must be said this is NOWHERE nearly as bad as) may find themselves in the end game missing critical stuff. I entered the last dungeon without [spoiler] the defense scale, the bamboo goddess, or any of the sprint combos[/spoiler] because I simply hadn't explored enough to find them and figured I'd see what the last dungeon is about. If there were more hints about finding these things, I would really have appreciated it. and, if I didn't find them, then the hints must be equally hidden because I swear I spoke to every single character in the game more than once. - There are a couple of odd difficulty spikes throughout the game. Certain bosses can be a lot tougher than the dungeon leading to them, especially early game when you don't have as many upgrades unlocked, and the [spoiler] cooking contest[/spoiler] would have really benefitted from telling you that you can put things down on the final pedestal as you go, an idea I tried out of frustration on my fourth failed attempt. - The worldbuilding. I praised it earlier, and it is generally a very fun world, but there are two complaints I have here. First, it is an optional mission to unlock the ability to [spoiler] read the language of the volari, the bird-like inhabitants of the island [/spoiler]. Fair enough, except a lot of the lore is only found through reading the relevant text. what's worse, if you do read all of it and find all of the [spoiler] murals from the volari [/spoiler] you can learn the [spoiler] true nature of the island as a giant weapon and of the volari as an active threat and historically genocidal society[/spoiler] before entering the final dungeon, where this is revealed to you anyway when [spoiler] you are tricked by Kurasu and nearly killed[/spoiler]. your already knowing this doesn't seem to factor into the ending at all. And, as an aside, the [spoiler] mysterious other figures who stop kurasu at the very end and save you[/spoiler] REALLY felt like they deserved more story themselves. Second, the world itself feels just a little out of place. There are lots of gags that apply broadly but not quite to everyone, and it makes the setting feel just a little mushy. For example, everyone in the [spoiler] cooking contest [/spoiler] has a food-pun based name (Mr. Presunto, Tobasco, Master Pankeki) but so does your friend who has little to do with it (Avocado). The game is canonically set in the mid 90's, but the only things that serve this are the arcade game in a few locations, the cassette tapes you collect, and the retro consoles and TV's dotted around the place (and, I suppose, the player character not having a cell phone). That there is 90's nostalgia feels a little bit like it was included because the mechanics are riffing on a 90's formula (although 2D Zelda titles with this formula were being released in the 80's and in the 2000's). Our main character (love the design btw) is dressed to play softball, but our weapon for the entire game (as a clear gag) is a hockey stick and not a bat. Our parents (dad especially) look like he's right out of an anime, and there are several Japanese names scattered around, but the setting doesn't feel particularly Japanese outside of this. A lot of these references feel like they're only there because they're things that are remembered from the time and so HAVE to be included (Zelda games are made in Japan and have characters that have punny names and appearance based on their role, Nintendo games love to hide their own consoles everywhere, cassettes are retro even if CDs represented twice the market share of audio cassettes by the mid 90's). ALL of that said, however, it is pretty minor in the grand scheme, and I don't think a gritty realistic depiction of, like, the Clinton years would have been a good idea. Who should get this and who should not? If you like 2D Zelda, adventure games, and games which offer a lot of exploration, secrets, and mystery hunting, this is for you. Same if you're the kind of person who likes games that can actually be finishes in a meaningful way. If you're big on combat based action adventure games and want a mechanical challenge, you probably won't find it here, but the game is still plenty fun. I would at least play the demo and decide from there. If, however, you're the type of person who's already sick of the 90's revival retro trend in games right now (boomer shooters, pixel art, etc.) then this one really isn't for you.

挺迷你的类塞尔达游戏，不赖

O jogo é muito bom, levinho, você pode passar horas explorando a ilha atrás de fazer a missão principal, as secundárias, e preenchendo o mapa com as áreas descobertas. Uma recomendação: viu um totem de salvamento? Salve! Você não vai se arrepender haha