If you’ve every played The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on Game Boy, you know how special it is. While it initially looks like your average top-down Zelda game, it quickly gets delightfully weird. Shopkeepers will blast you with lightning if you try to shoplift, Goombas from Mario wander around, and the entire story revolves around a giant fish sleeping on a mountain. It’s a fish-out-of-water story for Link, one that makes for the most mysterious but inviting Zelda game ever made.
Now, a new indie game is recapturing that magic. Isles of Sea and Sky just launched this week on Steam and it’s a pixel-perfect homage to Link’s Awakening. The adventure puzzle game captures the oddball spirit of that adventure, while doing its own thing entirely. And it does all that while playing with the limitations of a Game Boy art style. It’s one retro game you don’t want to miss this year.
The Zelda inspiration in Isles of Sea and Sky is clear from its first moment. It begins with a character washing ashore on an island, a scene that’s framed almost identically to the classic intro of Link’s Awakening. From there, players are set loose in a sunny, pixel-art island full of odd structures that they’ll learn about over time. There’s a main quest that involves unlocking a big door, but it’s an open-ended adventure.
But while it looks like a top-down Zelda game, that’s not actually how it plays. Isles of Sea and Sky is actually a minimalist open-world puzzle game (not unlike this year’s solid Islands of Insight). More specifically, it’s a “Sokoban” game. That’s a specific strain of puzzle game where players need to solve elaborate box-pushing puzzles. There are no enemies or combat. Instead, players gradually solve puzzles across a series of islands to open them up, collect stars to unlock new areas, and get a few power-ups along the way.
I fear that I may have lost some of you, but hang on.
Sure, box-pushing puzzles are an acquired taste. That task tends to be a bit maddening in classic games, leading to a lot of trial and error. Isles of Sea and Sky can be too as it requires some serious brainpower to solve complex order-of-operations puzzles. Despite being totally open-ended and full of puzzles to bounce between, I did find myself a little railroaded halfway through as I struggled to solve one obtuse environmental puzzle that held a key item. Thankfully, it solves for that problem with some great control considerations. I can undo my last move quickly with a button tap or reset the whole room just as quickly with another. Islands are dotted with unlockable shortcuts too, which remain open even if I undo a move. That takes a lot of the trial-and-error annoyance out of the genre.
It’s great that it does too, because Isles of Sea and Sky is far more engrossing than your typical Sokoban game. Each screen is filled with cleverly designed puzzles that beg to be solved. The world is rich with secrets too, which makes those puzzles worth solving. On one island, I discovered an odd environmental puzzle that had me pushing four boxes in each corner of the island onto specific platforms. I solved that after finding a clue hidden on a golden door underground. Once I unlocked that door, I discovered a secret item: a glove that would allow me to dig through boulders and change their position. That opened up several new secrets that had me obsessively digging through previous screens with fresh eyes.
All of it brings me back to playing Link’s Awakening as a kid — and not just for the aesthetic. That game has always stuck with me as I spent so much time simply wandering around soaking everything in. I don’t even know that I realized it had a straightforward story progression as a kid. It felt entirely open-ended, begging to be explored. Every time I’d discover a new item, it felt like I was learning the foreign language hidden in an unfamiliar world. Isles of Sea and Sky nails that same feeling. I start off scratching my head as I look at confusing objects I don’t know how to correctly interact with. By the end, I’m fluent.
Come to Isles of Sea and Sky for its nostalgic tone, but I promise that you won’t need to find a reason to stay. The current will pull you in.
Isles of Sea and Sky is available now on PC.
