Under The Island

Very Zelda but without as much polish and cohesion. Absolutely phenomenal showing for the team and, aside from the number puzzles, I have nothing but fond memories with the game. If they can make another game like this but improve from good to great in their next game we'll be looking at a juggernaut. Still, a very impressive effort for only having a handful of people working on it.

Fun 2D Zelda-like.

Cool game

I really love Under the Island, which is why this review is difficult for me. There is a huge world to explore if you don't simply follow the main story, with tons of secrets, puzzles, items and optional areas, but the game can become extremely exhausting.

My biggest problem is how grindy everything becomes. You backtrack constantly through a huge map, and enemies respawn every time you return to an area, so you end up fighting the same enemies again and again. Even optional areas can become frustrating because if you die, you return to your last checkpoint and may have to repeat a large section, including enemies you already fought.

There is fast travel, but only seven points across the entire game, and you have to solve another small puzzle to unlock each one. The first few times this is fine, but eventually I just wanted the game to give me the fast travel instead of putting another obstacle in front of me.

That is a problem throughout the whole game: there are too many obstacles and puzzles blocking exploration. You need specific items such as animal food to move animals or a bird that can retrieve things, but many of these tools are obtained through main-story progression. Because the game gives you so little direction, you can easily explore areas much earlier than intended and suddenly find yourself surrounded by difficult enemies and obstacles you aren't properly equipped for.

Healing can also be frustrating. When you're deep inside an optional area or dungeon, the game can be extremely stingy with health. Main-story areas are more manageable because healing is usually provided around important encounters, but exploring outside that path can become much more punishing.

Upgrading your equipment has the same problem. Your hockey stick is one of your most important tools, but upgrading it requires materials that can take a lot of work to obtain, and you can only upgrade it back in the starting town. Too often, finding materials means more puzzles, more backtracking, more enemies and needing another specific item before you can even reach them.

The map and objective system don't help either. The game gives you a large overview of the island but very little detailed guidance inside individual areas or dungeons. I accidentally reached one of the later mountain areas before completing several earlier regions, which made everything much harder than it needed to be.

Combat itself is mostly fine, but the top-down perspective can make attacking enemies diagonally awkward because your attacks don't always cover the direction you expect. Combined with endlessly respawning enemies, combat eventually starts feeling like another obstacle rather than something you want to do.

This game honestly has me conflicted. If you only follow the main story, it can feel surprisingly short. If you explore everything, it can become overly long, repetitive and grindy. I still love the game and had a lot of fun with it, but I wish the developers had reduced the backtracking and repetition, made exploration rewards more meaningful, provided better navigation and healing, and connected more of the optional content directly to the main adventure. There is an excellent game here, but too often it makes you work much harder than necessary just to enjoy it.

very fun like eastward