Link’s Awakening At Home!
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is one of my favorite Zelda games on any console. It managed to shrink down the core of A Link To The Past on the SNES and create a Zelda adventure as deep as any other, even with the handhelds limitations. It’s such a popular game that it even got a remastering for the Nintendo Switch some decades later.
Castaway is a retro love-letter to Link’s Awakening, taking the core elements from that game and creating a retro adventure that reminds you of the best that game had to offer while adding a few new cools bits to keep retro gaming fans happy. Canari games gives you just enough in this micro-adventure that should clock in around just under an hour for most players to complete.
The game sees our hero crash land on a planet (a beach area reminiscent of the one in Link’s Awakening to be more precise) and is tasked with collecting his lost gear and pet dog in order to sail away on the wreckage of his downed spacecraft to seek out new adventures. This adventure will see you tackle three dungeons, each with a boss that is holding one of your items.
These weapons include a pick-axe to break stones and deal extra damage and a grappling hook used to access new areas. The puzzles themselves are simple affairs but laid out well so that the action always has you moving forward. Along the way you’ll be able to find hearts to upgrade your health as well as collecting food to regain health.
Castaway is a fun adventure that you can adjust to your level. You can choose to play the game as easy as having the world devoid of any enemies to enjoy the puzzles or set it to “Unfair” which will challenge is the best gamers out there. But that’s not even all of it as the game as modes for speed-running and an entire second area that unlocks after to complete the main game.
You sail to this new area that features a huge tower and are tasked with ascending 50 floors, with each floor getting more and more challenging. This trick is that you loose all but three hearts and one death sends you back to the bottom. Killing all the enemies in each floor will not only open up the next floor but they will also drop gold that you can collect if you’re quick enough.
The gold serves as your XP, and as you collect more gold you will increase in level. Each level increase you can choose from one of three power-ups to help you along on your quest. There is a bit of strategy as you might need a health refill over a damage increase or shield upgrade. Maybe you want that extra heart sliver and hope you can make it to a kitchen room to regain some health. It’s a fun little mode that extends the games short runtime.
Castaway is a lovely little game with a fantastic visual style. I do wish the game was longer and had a fully fleshed out adventure (the game lacks any over-world or hub city to explore and this hurts the experience) but while it lasts its a fun and charming experience. I’d love to see the team release more dungeons as DLC is at all possible to give the game a little more bang for the $7 is going for.
I really do hope the team at Canari sees a good amount of sales for Castaway so that they can hunker down and give us a much larger adventure that can live beside the likes of its inspiration, something I really do think they can pull off based on this first micro-outing.
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