Inspired By Zelda: Castaway, the Unapologetic Love Letter to Link’s Awakening

Spoiler Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Castaway! If you want to experience the game spoiler-free, be sure to bookmark this page and visit again later.

It’s time for another Inspired by Zelda, where we dissect games that pay tribute to our favorite series! Today, we will be covering the just-released Castaway, the sophomore release from Canadian developer and publisher, Canari Games. It came out in August 2024, so it is still fresh out of the developer oven for us to enjoy. You can find it on Steam, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and Itchio for $7.99 USD.

If you couldn’t immediately tell from the incredible pixel art and the familiar-looking hero in the promotional images, Castaway is an apparent love letter to Link’s Awakening. The game is bite-sized, where players can finish the main story in thirty to forty-five minutes (especially if you’re familiar with classic Zelda mechanics)!

Let’s dive into what makes this such a quaint honor to the age-old classic.

A Beach Crash Déjà Vu

If a Zelda-like game doesn’t start with our hero being asleep in some way, is it even a Zelda-like? Instead of Link, you play as the equally silent protagonist, Martin, dressed in Breath of the Wild-style garb. He was flying in space over an Earth-like planet with his adorable dog companion, until an unexpected laser split their ship in half. They hurry to their escape pods and crash-land on a beach.

I’m sure this opening gameplay cutscene will look awfully familiar to Link’s Awakening fans. The first thing you do is nab your sword as you watch pterodactyl-like creatures nab your equipment and puppy friend. Time to adventure!

If it wasn’t already charmingly familiar enough, the game literally and figuratively drops you into this world. There is no dialogue in this game, so you are left to your own devices on where and how you choose to traverse the map. There is no guidance, much like Zelda games of old. This gives the game a delightful nostalgic quality, as if the graphics didn’t do that already.

An Ode to Game Boy-Era Art

Castaway’s opening cutscene and item-grab snippets boast a pixelated art style with a few more pixels, more akin to The Minish Cap. The rest of the game has the bits we’ve come to know and love from repeated playthroughs of Link’s Awakening. It felt like a warm hug, especially when grabbing Heart Containers and seeing the strained expression Martin makes when he’s pushing objects. The overworld map also resembles some of the game’s iconic locations, including a nod to Tal Tal Heights to the north. You even enter the first dungeon by jumping off a cliffside into a well, much like you do when grabbing a Heart Piece in Mabe Village.

The pixels aren’t the only artistic aspect of Castaway that felt inspired by Zelda. Travel back to the 8-bit console age with songs that feel like they could have fit in older Zelda titles. The overworld theme is catchy yet repetitive, much the march-like anthems keeping Link moving forward. The boss battles were fast-paced, pushing that sense of urgency that paired well with the staticky sword-slashing sound effects. The dungeon music felt slightly unsettling but maintained an upbeat quality. It let you know danger was near while keeping you motivated to solve the game’s environmental puzzles.

An Education in Rock-Pushing and Plant-Cutting

The majority of Castaway’s puzzles revolve around trimming small tree-like plants and pushing rocks in a specific order and path. This is what I like to call “Zelda Education,” in which all experienced Zelda players know immediately how to progress if they don’t know what to do by running through a list of series staples. Did you destroy all enemies in a room? Did you push a rock in every direction? Did you cut a bush to see if it would reveal a hole? You know the drill.

Castaway is too short and sweet of a game to include many diverse or complicated puzzles, but it really embraced the rock movement-based ones in an accessible, low-stakes way. They were relatively straightforward, which makes sense for a game appealing to all audiences. If you got stuck, exiting and re-entering an area made for an easy reset. If the game overstayed its welcome with a longer average playtime, the puzzles may have gotten repetitive.

But, the variety changed over the course of the game after acquiring more items, such as the hookshot. The difference between Martin’s hookshot and Link’s is the distance. There seems to be no limit to the one in Castaway, making for a few fun puzzles that require you to look all around the room to find the solution. This leads us into the familiarity players will have with his arsenal.

Item-Based Game Progression With Familiar Faces

It’s the classic formula. In Castaway, there are three dungeons where you collect a pickaxe, hookshot, and your lost puppy. Though every dungeon has the same aesthetic, the puzzle designs are inspired by the most recent item you acquired. Plus, they all require you to destroy objects forming a key pattern to unlock the boss key chest, which is a clever spin on the format. To get there, you have to fight some familiar faces.

The dungeons and overworld are crawling with enemies, and many of them bear a striking resemblance to old-timey Zelda baddies. Regarding standard enemies, you fight some that look like Beamos and Tektites. The first dungeon boss operates like the Dodongo Snake mixed with Moldorm, because it moves in a grid-like formation while requiring you to hit the weak spot on its segmented body. Another dungeon features an enemy that’s like a cuter version of Aquamentus or a Daira.

If the swordplay combat style wasn’t iconic enough, there are also plenty of opportunities to play tennis in everybody’s favorite Zelda combat trope! Yes, you can use your sword to play ping pong, hurling balls of energy back at your enemies like the good old days.

It was fun to see this structure employed in a game with such a short playtime. It proves how timeless of a setup it is. If you want to relive that feeling after playing a lot of the Wild Era games without sinking tons of hours into something else, Castaway will give you a quick hit before Echoes of Wisdom comes out!

A Tower of Ordeals

How about a combat trial to quench your thirst for blood? Castaway‘s version is very akin to the Trial of the Sword or Cave or Ordeals, in which players undergo a gauntlet of 50 rooms full of enemies to prove your mastery. Though including this feels like a no-brainer in the Zelda format, this it the point where the game strays the most from the classic template.

Castaway‘s offering, The Tower, is a roguelike. Each monster drops coins, which Martin uses to level up. Each time you level up, you get to pick between three boons to make you stronger, such as faster movement speed or better healing drops. If you die, you have to start over from the beginning with nothing.

This provides the difficulty Zelda players crave during a combat challenge while adding the developer’s own flavor. As you progress, we promise you will feel the anticipation of wondering whether or not the effort was worth it, or if a dubious reward awaits you. You’ll have to play to find out!

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Ultimately, Castaway is a “tiny awakening” that isn’t trying to hide what its ancestor is. If you go in with the expectation it will not be as expansive as its forefather, then you’ll enjoy the smile it will bring to your face. If you haven’t played Link’s Awakening in awhile, maybe this is your signal to revisit the classic!

Will you give Castaway a brief moment of your time to get a quick dose of nostalgia? Have you already played it? We’d love to hear your opinions below!