We Can Do Better Than Calling Zelda-Inspired Games Metroidvanias, Right? (Plus Some Indie Game Recs!)

In my piece about ‘Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ from last year, I originally had a brief digression about the genre name, and I ended up removing it because it kind of destroyed the flow of the piece. But… I can also just write that as its own thing, I don’t actually need to cram every varied idea I have while playing a game into a single article I write about that game. In fact, play your cards right and it can even become a vehicle to discuss other games! Who knew?!?).

Sarcasm aside, whatever the main genre of the 2D Zelda games is, it doesn’t really have a name, or certainly not one that’s caught on with the general public. I actually tried discussing this subject a few years ago, and in the time since, I feel like the style has proliferated even more, with a ton of new indie games falling into that bucket. I think that’s great, as a big fan of the genre, but it would certainly be nice to have an easier way to refer to that type of game, for a variety of reasons.

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So let’s start with my proposed name from a few years ago: Top Down Action-Adventure, or TDAA (I think I’ve been using Top Down A-A in the tags on this site too). In retrospect, I don’t dislike that name. Part of me thinks it’s a little wordy now, but that’s part of why you can just abbreviate it to TDAA. After all, it’s not like people usually spell out “First Person Shooter” or “Role Playing Game”, they just write (and even usually say) “FPS” or “RPG”. It’s fine.

It does feel a little overly specific, maybe, but those are all of the elements that make a 2D Zelda game a Zelda game. Take away the adventure part and there are a whole lot of dungeon crawlers and hack-and-slash games and such that apply; remove the action and you could technically include stuff like the 2D Pokémon games or Sokoban/block-pushing puzzle games in the genre. Those were essentially my arguments last time, and I think they mostly hold true now?

But I have actually played a few games from last year that made me reconsider that, though. Those games were Furniture & Mattress LLC’s ‘Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure’ and Cicada Games’ ‘Isles of Sea & Sky’. Writing reviews that cover a single game really in-depth has been a bit tough for me, so instead, let me work some discussion and recommendations of them into a larger related topic; that might be a little easier. 

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom's Map is a Blessing and a Curse

 

It’s been a little while since I wrote about video games, huh? My most recent one at this point was my two-part review of 'Cassette Beasts'; I’m still pretty happy with that one, and developers Bytten Studio have gone on to some big things with the game since then (including multiple updates, an entire multiplayer mode, some DLC, and even a BAFTA nomination). I’ve actually been working on a lot of video game pieces in the time since then, but it can be slow-going.

It probably doesn’t help that what I’m covering in those pieces are indie games, and those can bring special challenges. Since they aren’t as big, you do kind of have to introduce people to the game to some degree, which is kind of its own art. Some of them are small enough that they won’t have much attention, and I want to do them justice since they might not get all that much coverage outside of that. But even the ones that get more attention, I’d like to do more than just give a recap and a basic recommendation; I want to bring something unique to the discussion, y’know? That in and of itself makes for more effort, and on top of that, I can feel a little out of practice sometimes.

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Instead, I figured I’d do something a little easier, to sort of work my way back up to those pieces. See if I can kind of shake off the rust a little. What if I covered a single, bigger game, something that I didn’t really have to explain or contextualize, and only tackled a few things rather than feeling the need to delve into every part of it?

So to that end: ‘Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ came out last year, and I had a pretty good time playing through it! It’s more or less a perfect attempt to bring the more open-world feeling of “Breath of the Wild” to the 2D Zelda format, which is a wild achievement in game design that breaks the traditional format open in some interesting ways. Nintendo once again tapped Grezzo to develop this one, and they bring back the toybox art style that they used in the ‘Link’s Awakening’ remake from back in 2019. It’s still gorgeous, and I’m so glad that there’s now an original game in the series using that look.

I’ve wanted to see a game with playable Zelda for ages now, but I had always kind of taken Nintendo’s explanation of (paraphrased) “we want a game that stars Zelda to play differently than the games starring Link” to be more of an excuse for why it hadn’t happened yet. But the Echoes system is actually a fascinating choice, and I enjoyed it a lot. Scouring the map for every possible item to copy felt like an interesting twist on the traditional Zelda hunt for items, especially since some of those new echoes ended up granting you movement options that opened up the map.

Cassette Beasts, Side B: Steam in the Subway, Earth Is Afire

I’m finally back with my promised second article on Cassette Beasts! If you missed the first one, you can read it here; that one serves as my mostly spoiler-free general recommendation of the game. However, I also wanted to do some deeper looks into the game, its systems, its themes, and so on, which necessitates some spoilers. I’ll give a general warning when I start getting into mild things (like discussing specific monsters or the game’s mechanics), and then give a warning at the midpoint when I start moving into more serious story-related spoilers (as well as a few mentions about the story of Bytten Studio’s first game, Lenna’s Inception, which I covered here). Generally, I think this game is strong enough that being spoiled wouldn’t ruin it for you, but if you are sensitive to those, feel free to take advantage of those warnings as jumping off points, or even bookmark this for later, and come back later after you’ve played it some .

In the first part of my Cassette Beasts review, I mentioned that the game lived up to all of the expectations I had for it after loving Bytten Studio’s first game, Lenna’s Inception. And I want to look at that a little more; I’ve already said that they make for an interesting comparison, but there was something specific that stood out to me when I was looking at what I wanted to cover in a spoilered review. See, while it lived up to Lenna in quality, it was actually kind of funny how much expecting Cassette Beasts to be like its predecessor ended up surprising me, particularly in its world building.

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Not to spoil it too much, but Lenna’s Inception breaks the fourth wall several times over the course of a playthrough, culminating in a few big reveals during the final dungeon that recontextualize everything you’ve seen to that point, in a way that directly calls attention to the fact that it is a video game. It’s a really big and fun twist, the kind of thing that makes you go back and think “Oh, why didn’t I notice that earlier!”, and I kept expecting something like that in Cassette Beasts. Maybe it’s not fair to expect some huge surprise like that twice, but I can also see why I thought that; there are a few moments where you can see some similar ideas popping up, so it’s maybe not too big of a stretch to think that Cassette Beasts might at least have similar ideas on its mind.