Isle of Reveries

This game is stellar. It is a love letter to the GameBoy Color era of adventure games, particularly the Zelda titles. It contains incredible features such as: - Talking tree - Jumping over a rolling spike bar - Minecart dungeon - A dungeon with a 90-degree turning dial in the center of the room to manage access to corridors - The exact "sinking/diving under water" sprite from the aforementioned GBC Zelda games - Vaguely horrific undertones that one wouldn't expect in a game for children - Things behind waterfalls! - A trade quest that doesn't overstay its welcome - An underwater segment! - Ambiguous creatures that look like One Of The Animals Of All Time - And countless more! Its references to pop/internet culture and specific games are myriad. But they're executed in a way that makes you grin and giggle instead of groan. Some are probably so subtle that you won't even realize it until later. In all aspects, this game is everything you want it to be, and nothing else. But that's just the facts of the game itself. To make a glowing review even more enticing, the game's launch has showcased the dev's passion and care. Bug reports get prompt replies and are often fixed within hours. Sometimes the dev is the first to answer a question about "where do I go" or "I'm stuck, now what?". It reflects very well on the dev to see them actively communicating and engaging with the game's players. The time immediately after launch is always hectic, and seeing them stay on top of things and still have time for jokes is no small feat. If you've ever looked back fondly at the older era of 2D Zelda games, this is a game worth playing and a developer worth supporting.

All my wishes have been granted.

I love any top down zelda-like and this game adds a lot to the formula!

I'm really surprised by this game. I was expecting a Legend of Zelda inspired game but in the end... The puzzles are better, the ambiance is better and the side quest are also very nice and well made. I'm only around 7h in and i feel like there's still so much more to do! The full price is 100% worth it. I was expecting a quick and easy game but i found a wonderful, memorable game!

Isle of Reveries is an excellently crafted adventure game reminiscent of the GB/GBC Zelda games. Isle of Reveries takes from its inspirations yet solidifies its own identity via very well-designed dungeons and items and a brand new copy mechanic. I'm writing this review after completing the game 100%, and I'll happily say it was a true joy to play through. I really enjoyed my time exploring the world, with a separate jump button and up to 3 slots to use for items, which is a major convenience over the GB/GBC Zelda games. Solving puzzles in the dungeons often required creative thinking with the brand new copy mechanic. Some puzzles genuinely had me thinking for a while how to go about solving them and my mind was blown when I had the realization with how out-of-the-box the solutions were. Then there are some dungeons where the puzzle is the grander vision, such as how to get something to one spot and how to get yourself to another, and the obstacles along the way. The dungeons are the highlight of the game, and in my opinion they are better designed than most Zelda dungeons. I was also very pleased with the designs of the items, all of which have 2 or more uses outside of the dungeons. For example, an item that can pull objects can also be used to attack enemies, lift objects, and de-equip some enemies. The last major item blew my mind with its potential while also making traversing quicker and easier. It's a treat to imagine what kind of item you'll get next and eventually find out how it helps you. The game does a good job giving hints but not making it immediately obvious what the item is. [spoiler]I was pleasantly surprised to find an abundance of very useful optional items too![/spoiler] On the visual side, Isle of Reveries is a treat to look at, with nice pixel art and a soft palette that is pleasing to the eyes, relaxing even. Aside from a few outliers, it's clear what you can interact with, who is an enemy, and so on. The myriad of areas you'll explore have their own identity and are visually distinct from one another. The music is great as well, with tracks more on the ambient side. The music style used in the dungeons is heavily reminiscent of [i]The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening[/i], which was a delight since I enjoy those kinds of dungeon tracks. The soundtrack is a great listen all around. My favorites are the cave theme, house theme, dungeon 2, and a few others. There's a lot of replay value in the form of a Zelda-esque trade quest sequence and collectibles to find. You can equip up to three trinkets to aid you in your quest, which range from movement speed increase (exploring) to dropping hearts (defense), to additional damaging effects on your items (offense). I found the trinket variety nice, but I often stuck with the same few ones I found most useful in the broadest situations. Isle of Reveries falls a bit short in a few areas. First, the main character, Lief, moves too slow without the movement speed trinket and makes traversing in the early parts of the game tedious. Some overworld and dungeons feature a lot of twists, turns, and roundabout paths, and it caused me some frustration while backtracking for quests and puzzles coupled with Lief's slow movement speed. I feel the trinket speed boost should be the default movement speed (or, at least half of it), with a movement speed upgrade being permanent. The same goes for another type of movement later in the game ([spoiler]swimming[/spoiler]). Second, I ran into some bugs that made the game difficult to play at times, though I acknowledge and appreciate how hard the developer has been working to fix them since the game released. I ran into one softlock where I was stuck in a jumping state and couldn't pause or enter any areas, so I had to hard quit the game. Another bug was a very frustrating experience in a specific dungeon ([spoiler]dungeon 5 block room with the Fairy tile on the bottom left[/spoiler]), where I thought it wasn't possible to solve the puzzle because of I simply couldn't move an object I wanted to in a given direction even though there was visually nothing there to prevent me from doing so. Then after at least an hour or two of running around fruitlessly, I found out I could solve the puzzle with a workaround. Lastly is the controls and controller support. My iBuffalo SNES Controller works flawlessly in every other game I've played, but in this one it was getting double inputs on certain menus, and I ended up having to switch off of it to a different controller. I would've also liked to have multiple buttons mapped to one action, such as "Interact" also mapped to "Jump" since it feels more natural to me. Overall, if you love Zelda or top-down adventure games, you would love Isle of Reveries too. I'm happy I backed this game and that it delivered beyond the experience I was hoping for. If you haven't played a game like this before, I'd also recommend it because Isle of Reveries has a gentle learning curve. Give it a try!

解谜方面比较难的类塞尔达游戏！有一个独特的复制场景内物品的系统！很多时候关卡卡住都是因为脑子没转过弯，没发现某个物品可以被复制。战斗虽然机制很简单但是敌人伤害很高，boss的耐久都非常低，经常是在理解行为后3~4回合就可以快速结束战斗的设计，总体好玩！（不过依然仅推荐给该类型的高手玩家（

Owl tell you this legend is gonna lief you wanting more from this developer...fantastic zelda homage while being very much its own Just a few qol things getting in the way of a near perfect game but nothing too extreme Would absolutely recommend this gem