The Legend of Zelda games have had a profound impact on the indie game scene, as many devs have had their own takes on A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, and even the CDi games. Many studios have made a more straightforward game in that style, though the most interesting games I’ve seen tend to find a unique twist that makes them stand out from what’s come before. Under the Island is presented as a cozy version of that style of action-adventure game, which doesn’t really result in the sort of game that comes to mind as cozy. It’s more like a Zelda game that isn’t super aggressive to challenge your skills and has a lot of variety to its dungeons to subvert your expectations.
Under the Island stars Nia, a teenage girl who is forced to move to Seashell Island after her researcher parents are hired to dig and examine unique artifacts that only appear on this island. You soon realize the island is actually a refuge for a nearly extinct species, and you’ve come across its last surviving member. This lone guardian sends you on a quest to recover the four gears stolen by thieves—essential components the ark needs to keep from sinking into the ocean.
I assumed everybody on the island would die, but you never really get an idea of what a bad outcome would entail. You’re presented with a special treasure chest containing a weapon to help you on your adventure, but instead find a note from the supposed thieves, and in its place is a hockey stick. That ends up being enough for your needs.
With four gears that Nia must recover, your task is exploring this fairly large island to locate four dungeons with bosses to defeat before retrieving the gears. At least, that is what you’d expect. I was pleasantly surprised to find the first dungeon does not end in a big boss fight, but a neat scenario where you’re helping an actor put on a show from behind the scenes as you fight off ravenous fans and fix parts of the set that only you can fix, which I was not expecting. I won’t spoil the rest, but you do fight a few bosses in some of the remaining dungeons, while another has a fun questline of things to do to earn its gear. This game does a good job of giving you some variety so that you’re not just slashing enemies with a hockey stick for the 10 hours that it took to beat the game.
The action is pretty well done as your hockey stick works well to fight enemies, and the variety of enemies can require a decent amount of strategy changes to handle their tricks. It does get rough in some areas if you visit them early without the tools or upgraded stats to handle the tougher enemies safely, so it’s easy to get wiped out quickly. You can sprint past most enemies, so unless you’re after coins, hearts, or crafting materials, it’s easy to skip them.
You can bring the materials and coins you collect to a special village merchant to upgrade your hockey’s damage, increase how much health your life-potion equivalent restores, and improve a few other item–all in exchange for a set amount of materials and coins. The thing that confuses me the most about this merchant is that you’re never told the exact amount of materials you need for these upgrades, as you just see how many you have of each material with a red or blue number to indicate whether you have enough for what is needed. If a number is red, you will never know how much more of that material is needed to do the upgrade. That still annoys me a great deal while writing about it. It should be an easy update fix post-launch, so I hope the devs are listening.
For an island in the middle of the ocean, the map has a lot of biome diversity with a desert, swamp, forest, and snow sections of the map that can predictably be where the dungeons are, but the overworld can be explored freely from the start. People in your town provide tips for next main area that you’ll want to explore is, though that is somewhat of a suggestion if you want to go to places you’ve yet to uncover on the map. You may not be well-equipped to deal with the enemies in those areas, but you can go almost anywhere you want from the start. I spent plenty of time being dumb for not realizing exactly where I was supposed to go. Instead, I explored large portions of the world that I didn’t need to because I read a tip wrong or didn’t realize I was supposed to be somewhere else.
Pro Tip: You can toggle map location names on (they’re off by default), which saves you from aimless wandering. I did that a couple of times because I’m just dumb enough in these kinds of games if they don’t hold my hand enough, though I still eventually made it to where I needed to be in the end. At least you’ll find a lot of the side content in this game if you don’t stick to the main paths, which gets you upgrades, maybe some new items, and other things that I don’t know if I could’ve gotten any other way.
Much like the classic Zeldas, you have a subscreen with which to map any two of the items you get to the other two face buttons that aren’t reserved for attacks and other stuff. I unlocked things like a long-range fireball gun, bombs, pet treats, and some other weird stuff I wasn’t expecting. Pet treats are a clever addition. You can use them to lure animals onto ground switches or sic them on enemy weak points. They’ll also let you recruit a dog companion for your adventure, and even earn extra hearts by offering them to mice hidden in dungeons. There is a lot of interesting side content around the world that is worth seeking out, and I probably didn’t even come close to seeing everything, though there’s no stat screen to tell me if I am missing anything.
Let’s get back to what makes this a cozy Zelda experience, because that’s the general premise for what sets it apart from most of the other indie games taking inspiration from Nintendo’s legendary series. I feel like it’s a lot more subtle than you’d expect. There are things like enemies in dungeons that stay dead after you kill them, so revisiting rooms does not respawn those enemies to keep you fighting them over and over again. Even if you die in a dungeon, you can just respawn at the last checkpoint or save point with all of those enemies staying dead. The same thing seemed to be the case for various biomes around the map, as you’d see enemies stay dead while you’re still in that biome… until something happened, and I’m still not sure what caused them to come back. I could never figure out what the trick was, but it seemed to take enough time so that you could explore those areas further to find your way around, solve puzzles, or just enjoy the vibes all around the map.
What makes this game a cozy experience is that everything about it has lower stakes than the average Zelda game. Most of these dungeons and biomes are not being run by a big evil boss ruining everything, though the story eventually does find a big bad to take down to save the island, and maybe the world at the same time. In hindsight, I’d describe the story as a quest to defeat a looming villain and protect the island’s carefree atmosphere, largely because its residents have no idea what’s truly happening. From their perspective, a few strange events flare up, then mysteriously resolve, and life carries on as usual. Meanwhile, Nia’s parents keep studying artifacts, never once crossing paths with their daughter, who ends up uncovering far more about the island’s secrets than they ever do.
Under the Island does a good job of providing a lot to do outside of the main story path, though I find the lack of any sort of stat page or any way of tracking some of this stuff undermines the experience for me. If I wasn’t paying attention to people giving me a quest to bring them something, I could easily forget that any of that happened, unless I happened to find the item somewhere on the map and then randomly run into the person who wanted it to complete the quest I didn’t realize existed. I could use the inventory screen to assume that these spaces might be filled if I had found and done everything, but would I be sure of that? Probably not. I ended the game with 15 hearts after collecting an upgrade for every dungeon and the heart coins that you can turn into an exercise guy to add a new heart for every four coins, but how many total coins are there? I assume it’s two full rows of hearts for 18 total hearts, but that’s just a guess. You do unlock a treehouse in the village that displays your trophies or achievements, which can clue you in about extra stuff you missed, but plenty of these tasks are ones that I’d happily look up a guide or wiki to find out what I need to do to unlock them. I do love games when they offer regional stats for where you might be missing various collectibles, but this is not one of those games, and it’s kind of the biggest shortcoming that it has.
You can easily tell this game owes a lot of its style to A Link to the Past and the devs have done a great job of taking that inspiration to build out a fun world to explore that feels like a modern isolated island with some ancient stuff hidden around many corners. The enemies have a great amount of variety and nuance for what I’d have expected, as every biome features unique enemies that fit the vibes of what they have going on. The soundtrack is also quite pleasant with a good overworld theme that plays in most areas and a night theme that is more chill, though the rest of the soundtrack has some fun stuff to also be a good addition to the cozy vibes in spite of what you’re actually doing.
Under the Island offers a playful spin on the A Link to the Past formula, and for me, it’s more approachable than the classic game once my brain clicks on where I’m supposed to go… and the quicker pace helps out a lot. It took me just over nine hours to beat the game, with a healthy amount of side content being done along with a lot of wandering around at times. It does have some shortcomings with the lack of trackable side quests and collectibles, along with an upgrade merchant that can’t tell me how much stuff I need to get those upgrades. I do hope the devs keep working on the game a bit more to keep improving it, but what’s here is a very fun time for those who want a new take on a classic Zelda formula. I definitely will return to the game to see if I can figure out where the rest of the things I missed are until a good guide can help me out.
Under the Island is presented as a cozy version of that style of action adventure game, which doesn’t really result in the sort of game that comes to mind as a cozy game. It’s more like a Zelda game that isn’t super aggressive to challenge your skills and has a lot of variety to its dungeons to subvert your expectations.
The Legend of Zelda games have had a profound impact on the indie game scene, as many devs have had their own takes on A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, and even the CDi games. Many studios have made a more straightforward game in that style, though the most interesting games I’ve seen tend to find a unique twist that makes them stand out from what’s come before. Under the Island is presented as a cozy version of that style of action-adventure game, which doesn’t really result in the sort of game that comes to mind as cozy. It’s more like a Zelda game that isn’t super aggressive to challenge your skills and has a lot of variety to its dungeons to subvert your expectations.
Under the Island stars Nia, a teenage girl who is forced to move to Seashell Island after her researcher parents are hired to dig and examine unique artifacts that only appear on this island. You soon realize the island is actually a refuge for a nearly extinct species, and you’ve come across its last surviving member. This lone guardian sends you on a quest to recover the four gears stolen by thieves—essential components the ark needs to keep from sinking into the ocean.
I assumed everybody on the island would die, but you never really get an idea of what a bad outcome would entail. You’re presented with a special treasure chest containing a weapon to help you on your adventure, but instead find a note from the supposed thieves, and in its place is a hockey stick. That ends up being enough for your needs.
With four gears that Nia must recover, your task is exploring this fairly large island to locate four dungeons with bosses to defeat before retrieving the gears. At least, that is what you’d expect. I was pleasantly surprised to find the first dungeon does not end in a big boss fight, but a neat scenario where you’re helping an actor put on a show from behind the scenes as you fight off ravenous fans and fix parts of the set that only you can fix, which I was not expecting. I won’t spoil the rest, but you do fight a few bosses in some of the remaining dungeons, while another has a fun questline of things to do to earn its gear. This game does a good job of giving you some variety so that you’re not just slashing enemies with a hockey stick for the 10 hours that it took to beat the game.
The action is pretty well done as your hockey stick works well to fight enemies, and the variety of enemies can require a decent amount of strategy changes to handle their tricks. It does get rough in some areas if you visit them early without the tools or upgraded stats to handle the tougher enemies safely, so it’s easy to get wiped out quickly. You can sprint past most enemies, so unless you’re after coins, hearts, or crafting materials, it’s easy to skip them.
You can bring the materials and coins you collect to a special village merchant to upgrade your hockey’s damage, increase how much health your life-potion equivalent restores, and improve a few other item–all in exchange for a set amount of materials and coins. The thing that confuses me the most about this merchant is that you’re never told the exact amount of materials you need for these upgrades, as you just see how many you have of each material with a red or blue number to indicate whether you have enough for what is needed. If a number is red, you will never know how much more of that material is needed to do the upgrade. That still annoys me a great deal while writing about it. It should be an easy update fix post-launch, so I hope the devs are listening.
For an island in the middle of the ocean, the map has a lot of biome diversity with a desert, swamp, forest, and snow sections of the map that can predictably be where the dungeons are, but the overworld can be explored freely from the start. People in your town provide tips for next main area that you’ll want to explore is, though that is somewhat of a suggestion if you want to go to places you’ve yet to uncover on the map. You may not be well-equipped to deal with the enemies in those areas, but you can go almost anywhere you want from the start. I spent plenty of time being dumb for not realizing exactly where I was supposed to go. Instead, I explored large portions of the world that I didn’t need to because I read a tip wrong or didn’t realize I was supposed to be somewhere else.
Pro Tip: You can toggle map location names on (they’re off by default), which saves you from aimless wandering. I did that a couple of times because I’m just dumb enough in these kinds of games if they don’t hold my hand enough, though I still eventually made it to where I needed to be in the end. At least you’ll find a lot of the side content in this game if you don’t stick to the main paths, which gets you upgrades, maybe some new items, and other things that I don’t know if I could’ve gotten any other way.
Much like the classic Zeldas, you have a subscreen with which to map any two of the items you get to the other two face buttons that aren’t reserved for attacks and other stuff. I unlocked things like a long-range fireball gun, bombs, pet treats, and some other weird stuff I wasn’t expecting. Pet treats are a clever addition. You can use them to lure animals onto ground switches or sic them on enemy weak points. They’ll also let you recruit a dog companion for your adventure, and even earn extra hearts by offering them to mice hidden in dungeons. There is a lot of interesting side content around the world that is worth seeking out, and I probably didn’t even come close to seeing everything, though there’s no stat screen to tell me if I am missing anything.
Let’s get back to what makes this a cozy Zelda experience, because that’s the general premise for what sets it apart from most of the other indie games taking inspiration from Nintendo’s legendary series. I feel like it’s a lot more subtle than you’d expect. There are things like enemies in dungeons that stay dead after you kill them, so revisiting rooms does not respawn those enemies to keep you fighting them over and over again. Even if you die in a dungeon, you can just respawn at the last checkpoint or save point with all of those enemies staying dead. The same thing seemed to be the case for various biomes around the map, as you’d see enemies stay dead while you’re still in that biome… until something happened, and I’m still not sure what caused them to come back. I could never figure out what the trick was, but it seemed to take enough time so that you could explore those areas further to find your way around, solve puzzles, or just enjoy the vibes all around the map.
What makes this game a cozy experience is that everything about it has lower stakes than the average Zelda game. Most of these dungeons and biomes are not being run by a big evil boss ruining everything, though the story eventually does find a big bad to take down to save the island, and maybe the world at the same time. In hindsight, I’d describe the story as a quest to defeat a looming villain and protect the island’s carefree atmosphere, largely because its residents have no idea what’s truly happening. From their perspective, a few strange events flare up, then mysteriously resolve, and life carries on as usual. Meanwhile, Nia’s parents keep studying artifacts, never once crossing paths with their daughter, who ends up uncovering far more about the island’s secrets than they ever do.
Under the Island does a good job of providing a lot to do outside of the main story path, though I find the lack of any sort of stat page or any way of tracking some of this stuff undermines the experience for me. If I wasn’t paying attention to people giving me a quest to bring them something, I could easily forget that any of that happened, unless I happened to find the item somewhere on the map and then randomly run into the person who wanted it to complete the quest I didn’t realize existed. I could use the inventory screen to assume that these spaces might be filled if I had found and done everything, but would I be sure of that? Probably not. I ended the game with 15 hearts after collecting an upgrade for every dungeon and the heart coins that you can turn into an exercise guy to add a new heart for every four coins, but how many total coins are there? I assume it’s two full rows of hearts for 18 total hearts, but that’s just a guess. You do unlock a treehouse in the village that displays your trophies or achievements, which can clue you in about extra stuff you missed, but plenty of these tasks are ones that I’d happily look up a guide or wiki to find out what I need to do to unlock them. I do love games when they offer regional stats for where you might be missing various collectibles, but this is not one of those games, and it’s kind of the biggest shortcoming that it has.
You can easily tell this game owes a lot of its style to A Link to the Past and the devs have done a great job of taking that inspiration to build out a fun world to explore that feels like a modern isolated island with some ancient stuff hidden around many corners. The enemies have a great amount of variety and nuance for what I’d have expected, as every biome features unique enemies that fit the vibes of what they have going on. The soundtrack is also quite pleasant with a good overworld theme that plays in most areas and a night theme that is more chill, though the rest of the soundtrack has some fun stuff to also be a good addition to the cozy vibes in spite of what you’re actually doing.
Under the Island offers a playful spin on the A Link to the Past formula, and for me, it’s more approachable than the classic game once my brain clicks on where I’m supposed to go… and the quicker pace helps out a lot. It took me just over nine hours to beat the game, with a healthy amount of side content being done along with a lot of wandering around at times. It does have some shortcomings with the lack of trackable side quests and collectibles, along with an upgrade merchant that can’t tell me how much stuff I need to get those upgrades. I do hope the devs keep working on the game a bit more to keep improving it, but what’s here is a very fun time for those who want a new take on a classic Zelda formula. I definitely will return to the game to see if I can figure out where the rest of the things I missed are until a good guide can help me out.
by Chris Selogy
