Under the Island is a top-down action and adventure videogame that evokes the exploration, puzzle solving, and combat design of classic Legend of Zelda videogames. Through its bright, colorful palette and detailed pixel art graphics, it most strongly resembles Link’s Game Boy Advance adventure in The Minish Cap.
I play as Nia, a teenage girl who unhappily moves to the remote Seashell Island with her parents when they are given rare permission to study its ancient ruins. Shooed away to explore Koala Village while her parents unpack, Nia wanders up to a storm god’s shrine at the Village’s center. Placing her hand upon the forbidden shrine, the ground opens beneath Nia and she falls into a hidden chamber filled with massive gears and rods. There she meets Karasu, a bipedal bird-like being who reveals that Seashell Island is actually an Ark that protects the last remnants of the alien Volarian species. Traitors have stolen four gears essential to The Ark’s function; without them, it will sink beneath the ocean waves, taking the slumbering Volarians and Nia’s new home with it. With Karasu too weak to seek out the stolen gears himself, he recruits the reluctant newcomer to recover them on his behalf. This brisk ten hour adventure takes Nia across all of Seashell Island’s unlikely biomes on a quest to save her new home before it is lost forever.
One of Under the Island’s particular strengths is the distinct characterizations of the various people who live on its mysterious titular island. There are several dozen nonplayer characters in Koala Village alone. Most are simple ciphers with only a single defined purpose, like the grumbling barfly who never leaves his stool at Arno’s Bar and the taunting children who perpetually jump rope outside M. Uscle’s Gym. Even these functional NPCs have coarse and memorable personalities when Nia speaks to them.
These incidental characters are contrasted strongly with Koala Village’s more prominent denizens. The brothers Lucca and Gogh have let their competing viewpoints of science vs. art degrade their relationship into a bitter feud. The enmity they express when venting about their sibling to Nia makes them feel more alive and memorable than the neutral and generic tone uttered in typical videogame fare—or even the likes of The Legend of Zelda’s Koholint Island, to which Seashell Island feels more than accidentally similar. It helps that every NPC in Koala Village follows an evolving script. Instead of regurgitating the same canned lines every time they are spoken to, the things they have to say change based on Nia’s progress in the story.
No character feels more textured than Nia herself. I first meet her during the journey to her new home with her parents. She reads more like a real teenager than a typical player character. She is skeptical and surly about the move and doesn’t disguise it from her parents, who are unhelpfully chipper and dismissive about Nia’s concerns. As Nia’s life takes a supernatural turn that distracts from her concerns, her attitude turns towards what must be closer to her real personality. She’s arrogant and aloof, confident of her abilities and waving off concerns that she might fail. This attitude contrasts sharply with Avocado, a responsible and devout Seashell Island native on a parallel journey to Nia’s own. In another videogame, Avocado would be the player character and Nia the irresponsible foil. Under the Island makes the interesting choice to flip that dynamic. It doesn’t make the entire videogame stand out but it is a small note in its favor.
During the car ride that opens Under the Island, Nia glumly predicts that Seashell Island will be “sand, palm trees, and a bunch of retirees.” The real place turns out to be more fantastic than Nia’s horrifying vision of a Florida retirement community.
Perhaps aided by the alien technology concealed beneath its surface, Seashell Island impossibly supports multiple diverse biomes despite its small scale. Koala Village rests in a fertile valley near a large farming operation. The valley is nestled between an arid desert canyon navigated by crumbling cable cars and a dense evergreen forest where lumberjacks hack away at thick tree trunks, fearful of the guardian said to protect the forest’s heart. All of this is loomed over by a frigid mountaintop where Nia almost freezes to death on her first reckless visit.
The topographical variety is dense with unique populations, from the vaguely Japanese residents of Koala Village, to the industrious farmers and lumberjacks creating legitimate industry on the tiny island, to sentient, cereal-peddling penguins, to the crustacean and octopod pirates with hidden bases on the island shores. Nia’s initial skepticism about moving to Seashell Island moves quickly from quaint to absurd. Even the most jaded young adult has no reason to be bored here.
Nia has immediate access to a surprising amount of Seashell Island’s surface soon after her encounter with Karasu. The main limitations she encounters are obstacles and chokepoints that require specific tools to bypass. Most of these may be overcome when Nia obtains her first tool: a Hockey Stick. In genre fashion, it was meant to be a sword, but when Nia opens its chest in Karasu’s chamber, she instead finds the Stick and an apologetic note. The substitute doesn’t impair her at all. The Hockey Stick is capable of slashing impeding bushes, wandering monsters, and traitorous Cog thieves as readily as any blade.
The other tools Nia acquires are also offbeat substitutes to an adventurer’s familiar toolkit. An angry plant’s head spits slow-moving orbs of fire. A noisy trumpet disturbs sound sleepers and startles docile islanders. To progress instantly between day and night, Nia can play a Game Boy. About the only expected tools Nia finds are a shovel and a bag of bombs, and even these are exploited in unexpected ways to open new paths around Seashell Island.
The most interesting ways Nia interacts with Seashell Island are through its wildlife. A frequent companion is the Hiku-Bird, a wild fowl with a superfluous pompom attached to its head who develops an intense loyalty to Nia. The Hiku-Bird may be pointed anywhere on the screen with a cursor, prompting it to move heavy blocks, activate out-of-reach switches, catch fish, and pluck branches from between a hippopotamus’s teeth. The Hiku-Bird works for free. Seashell Island’s other animal inhabitants may be bribed with a bag of biscuits. Heavy bulls are maneuvered to weigh down switches, goats summoned to charge into trees and walls, and wolves tempted to protect Nia from Seashell Island’s wandering monsters. Under the Island’s best puzzles nearly all involve its wildlife.
With such a varied space to explore and few obstacles preventing Nia from going almost anywhere I wish, finding the next of the four stolen Cogs might require a discouraging amount of wandering. Under the Island sidesteps these feelings with a hint system that prods Nia on where she should go next.
Each time Nia visits Koala Village, the villagers abuzz with new rumors of events happening elsewhere around the Island. Speaking with one or two villagers will nudge Nia in the direction she should go next. Persisting and speaking with a few more will make a stamp appear on Nia’s map accompanied by an alerting chime. This is a good system to satisfy two broad player groups. If I want to know where to go next, I can opt-in to receive hints by tapping into the Koala Village rumor mill. If I prefer to find Nia’s next goal without assistance, I can see where random wandering takes her next.
Seashell Island’s dungeons are wonderfully idiosyncratic. Of the five total that Nia explores, only two fit the traditional concept of an action-adventure “dungeon,” that being a mysterious ruin buried beneath the ground filled with surprisingly operational machinery and traps. The more memorable dungeons are set in mundane settings like a barn and a cereal factory, but with a fantastic twist like an infestation of revolting vegetable monsters and invading, ravenous snow pirates. The most impractical “dungeon” is barely one at all, following Nia as she is subjected to a secret test of character by a crotchety, reclusive mentor then entered into a cooking competition.
Despite their unusual contexts, Under the Island’s dungeons still fit comfortably into genre conventions. Each is a warren of passageways that fit impossibly inside and underneath their surface entrances. Nia must thoroughly explore each dungeon, solving simple puzzles and defeating bosses to earn keys, maps, and compasses. Many puzzles are impossible to solve until Nia can discover that dungeon’s unique item, adding a new tool to her kit. It takes experimentation and ingenuity to find all the ways Nia’s new toy may be exploited to reach the dungeon’s end and recover its guarded Cog.
I must caution players that one dungeon features several nonogram puzzles. They are simple puzzles which will not trouble anyone already familiar with nonograms. To those that do not know their rules, or even recognize that a grid labeled with numbers is a picture puzzle at all, they may be confounding roadblocks. The brief pictorial instruction Nia is given does a poor job conveying how they are meant to be solved. If you plan to play Under the Island, learn about nonogram puzzles in advance or be prepared to look up the answers in a guide.
Combat is where Under the Island is least complicated. Many of the monsters Nia encounters around Seashell Island are wandering humanoid vegetables, implied to be escapees from The Ark’s crumbling stasis systems. The remainder, like a recurring pair of pirate octopuses, are inexplicably silly additions with no explanation offered. Nearly all can be defeated by pointing Nia at them and pressing the attack button to swing her Hockey Stick until they are defeated. There is little risk in this strategy to start, but as Nia accumulates new hit points and upgrades her Hockey Stick, the fundamental danger of common enemies shifts from negligible to non-existent. This strategy and its growing effectiveness matches perfectly with the Legend of Zelda videogames upon which Under the Island models itself.
Not every baddie Nia encounters may be dispatched with sloppy button mashing. Some humanoid enemies carry large shields against which reckless attacks are worthless. Only a precisely timed strike during a moment of vulnerability will penetrate their defenses. Another uncommon enemy type are bare eyes with skeletal wings. Their erratic, swooping attacks are difficult to fend off with the Hockey Stick’s short range, and worse still the creatures don’t stay down for long. Suddenly encountering these more tenacious enemies after the comparative mindlessness of most monsters lurking around Seashell Island is an unpleasant speed bump in Under the Island’s otherwise brisk pace.
Combat becomes most interesting against the bosses that capstone each dungeon. These titanic foes have acute weak points protected from Nia’s Hockey Stick. Defeating each boss is a kind of puzzle where Nia must use the new tool she acquired and the lessons she learned while wielding it to cause the boss’ weak point to become vulnerable for a few precious seconds. Bosses have memorable designs, ranging from a giant parasite with multiple independent body parts, a giant slime enslaved as a living garbage disposal, and a weaponized heavy crane.
While dungeons and their bosses are memorable, they are not what occupy the majority of Nia’s time on Seashell Island. The island’s surface is an intricate and interconnected area. Unexpected paths leading to previous and future areas abound; often Nia steps between the perimeters dividing each area of the island and I emit a small, impressed sound as I realize I’ve found a circuitous route to a place I’ve been before. Finding and unlocking every possible route is an engrossing task on its own. Then I find the tangle of explorable paths is dense with additional activities and collectables that occupy far more of Nia’s time than pursuing the Ark’s four stolen cogs.
Under the Island’s secondary objectives range from predictable to unusual. The most numerous are the silver heart coins found strewn across almost every area. Delivering four to M. Uscle in his Koala Village gym awards Nia with a new hit point, so it’s always worth the effort of stopping to puzzle out how to reach a coin when she passes by one. Seashell Island’s surface is pocked by dozens of tunnels and cave entrances containing puzzles that feel like they have been plucked from an unfinished dungeon and repurposed as an independent challenge. Some of these caves contain the block-pushing puzzles that unlock Seashell Island’s fast travel stations; the later puzzles are among Under the Island’s most difficult, which feels out of step with how infrequently Nia ends up using the fast travel stations they open. These are the exceptions. Most cave rewards, while optional, can make Nia’s quest much easier by increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of her tools.
The most elaborate objectives involve Seashell Island’s varied residents. Speaking with some NPCs can get Nia involved in their conflicts and misadventures, from helping Brina reunite her feuding uncles to investigating a mysterious cabin on the beach guarded by two intimidating figures. Completing these quests can take Nia between multiple locations with no available markers reminding her where to go or who to speak with. Reflecting the Legend of Zelda videogames it is inspired by, Under the Island has no quest log. It would benefit from one. Taking a break to complete a dungeon, explore a newly discovered path, or turn in medals to M. Uscle makes it easy to lose track of a path that is difficult to pick up again.
The filmmaker Howard Hawks described a great movie as “three good scenes and no bad ones.” If I could apply that philosophy to videogame design, Under the Island fits it perfectly. Its brilliant pixel art graphics, the edge honed into its characters, and the intricacy of the island itself—ironically the parts above the island, not the ones under it as its title suggests—are its best features. It would be an exaggeration to say I was never frustrated or displeased by some of my time playing, but I can honestly report it left me with no genuine negative feelings. From the moment I started a new game until the credits rolled, I was lulled by the pleasant knowledge that I was playing a high quality interpretation of one of my favorite AAA videogame franchises. In the scrum of indie action and adventure videogames inspired by The Legend of Zelda, Under the Island is above average.