Review: Under The Island Is The Legend Of Zelda/Gravity Falls Hybrid You Never Knew You Wanted

As with any art form, video games are often inspired by what came before. Some games wear those influences on their sleeve, like Slime King Games’ Under the Island. Clearly inspired by older entries in The Legend of Zelda franchise and other similar 2D top-down adventure games, Under the Island uses those tried-and-true gameplay mechanics as the bones for a charming, colorful adventure through a remote island’s various environments. Luckily, the game is more than just the sum of its parts.

Through a charming presentation, fun exploration, and clever bosses, Under the Island distinguishes itself from the rest of the genre. There’s an undeniable sense of fun to the gameplay that makes for a consistently entertaining experience. While a few minor hiccups keep it from reaching all-time status, anyone who adores those classic Zelda adventures will find plenty to love in Under the Island — and if it’s your first swing at that style of gameplay, it’s a great introduction benefiting from the retro vibes and tight gameplay.

Review Score: 4.5/5

Pros:	Cons:
Art design and worldbuilding is cute, charming, and clever	Fairly standard narrative tropes don’t feature too many surprises
A solid blend of action, adventure, and puzzle gameplay keeps everything moving at a good pace	Relatively short length leaves the player wanting more.
Inventive boss battles stand out as highlights of the experience	A very specific difficulty curve can take a simple experience into frustrating quickly

A Seaside Story That You Shouldn’t Miss

A retro adventure that feels indebted to classic games like Link’s Awakening while still being fueled with its own artistic style and storytelling impulses, Under the Island is an absolute delight. After moving to the remote Seashell Island with her parents for their work, average teenager Nia discovers that the island is actually an ark. Constructed by a long-lost race eons ago, the four gears crucial to the island’s survival have been taken. This leaves Nia tasked with exploring the island, confronting the creatures standing in her way with her hockey stick, and saving her newfound home. The presentation of Under the Island is one of the best elements of the game, with a strong balance of cutesy animation and retro world design.

Exploring the town and the surrounding wilderness is a blast, especially as players discover new items that can be used for both combat and traversal. There’s a really cute sense of retro charm to the game that makes it instantly easy to fall in love with the characters and world. While the world design is clearly indebted to classics like A Link to the Past, the characters and narrative take just as many cues from modern stories like Gravity Falls or The Owl House. It’s a fitting fusion, creating a landscape that’s fun to explore. It’s a familiar enough game with a narrative that never really surprises the player, but with enough fresh elements to keep from ever feeling repetitive or too samey. Charm goes a long way towards improving the experience, something that Under the Island has in great supply.

Fun Exploration, Tight Gameplay, And Great Bosses Deliver A Delightful Experience

Similar to the visual aesthetics, the core gameplay of Under the Island will be familiar to anyone who has played a classic Legend of Zelda, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, Under the Island uses its worldbuilding to inform its own tweaks on the formula. Nia’s hockey stick, for example, serves as a handy tool in combat, a means of hitting projectiles towards faraway targets, and a means of collecting resources otherwise out of reach. The world is open to explore from jump, although the game is quick to warn the player if they’re approaching an area that will quickly outclass them.

While there is a clear difficulty curve that kicks in, especially in the endgame, Under the Island is tightly designed enough to work consistently. Plenty of environmental puzzles are littered throughout the overworld and within the dungeons, giving players some fairly straightforward challenges to solve. While the puzzles are largely fairly simple, there’s a sense of creativity to the challenges that keeps them entertaining. The boss fights in particular take that spirit and run with it, with inventive objectives like helping keep a mob of fans from overwhelming a singer or winning a cooking competition, adding a lot of fun, unique layers to the otherwise standard top-down adventure gameplay.

There’s Plenty To Love About Under The Island

Under the Island is a retro title that still feels very modern, thanks to a cute art aesthetic and charming sense of worldbuilding. It creates a fun world to explore and fills it to the brim with charming characters and vivid challenges. While it may never be all that surprising, it doesn’t really need to be. Instead, the game works best because of its refined versions of classic tropes and elements, benefiting from generations of previous games laying the groundwork for the sweet and oftentimes silly adventure that unfolds.

The game’s run-time is in the range of 8 to 12 hours, depending on how much you want to explore the world and complete side quests, and it will leave players wanting more. It’s almost disappointing when the narrative all wraps up, as the infectious charm at the heart of the experience will leave players wanting more. That’s better than over-stretching, but it also means the game doesn’t have the larger scope that it could probably benefit from. Still, there’s a lot to love about Under the Island. Even beyond the throwback vibes and solid gameplay, the visual and music presentation make for a sweet experience that’s perfect for younger gamers and older players alike. Under the Island is a great modern take on a classic archetype.