Isle of Reveries

While the influences Isle of Reveries pulls from are worn on its sleeve, the way in which it uses those to craft new experiences is deft. Reveries is a puzzle-forward, top-down adventure game that will find you using your inventory to its fullest and leveraging everything in exploration, puzzle solving, as well as in the combat. You start with the ability in the trailer and will still be making use of it as well as your other tools throughout the game. The game follows a familiar progression in some ways but also progresses in surprising ways at times. The way to unlocking some dungeons are as much an adventure and challenge as the dungeons themselves. The progression is linear but the world opens up in the familiar way where new paths and new treasures become accessible as you gain new tools. The game will challenge you both in its puzzles and in some of its more demanding combat sequences and I absolutely recommend it for people willing to take up such challenges. This game links between the influence material to its own path as a maturation from that.

Extremely charming game in the style of GB-era Zelda. The tools and dungeon mechanics are all very unique and interesting to play, and exploring is very satisfying much like a good metroidvania. The soundtrack is great, the world looks great, and the writing is solid. I tried the demo and immediately made the decision to purchase it and am glad I did.

Playing this games feels like what you remember Zelda games being like when you were a kid. Every aspect of this game surprised me, but the puzzles especially are incredibly well done. If you want to play something like the gb era Zelda games, this might be the perfect game for you.

fun

Wow, what an amazing game! It could be recency bias, but I think this is my favorite Zelda-like game of all time, aside from [i]maybe[/i] some of the actual Zelda games on the gameboy that it is presumably inspired by. I did have one unique bug in my playthrough that nobody else seems to have run into, and that the dev was unable to reproduce even on Linux (since that's what I'm on) with my save data, and it blocked progression, but the dev was kind enough to at least provide me with a copy of my save data that has the one puzzle that bug made unsolvable solved, so I was able to play through the game to completion despite that unique oddity. The dev is very active on the steam forums for the game, frequently fixing reported bugs and implementing reasonable suggestions, as well as answering questions. It's very clear they care a lot about the game, and would continue to add much more to it (in the form of optional content from the sound of it) if it proves to be financially sustainable to do so. I sure hope that turns out to be the case, because it could mean an expansion to the optional multiplayer content that reminds me of Four Swords Adventures for the Gamecube, which would absolutely delight me.

i do like this game, it has a zelda gameboy color vibe. but it can be very mazey and im often lost we zero clue where to go and because most of the walkways are so narrow it can feel suffocating not exploratory . overall i recommend

Incredible, puzzle-forward Zelda homage. Dense, smart, fun.