Mini Review Castaway

We almost set ourselves the challenge of writing this review without mentioning Link's Awakening. But as sure as a retro-styled 2D RPG includes hackable bushes, Castaway had so many similarities to the Nintendo classic that it would have been impossible. Despite our preference for a fresher take on the formula like the recent Kudzu, in fairness, Canari Games (Lunark) makes no attempt to conceal Castaway's inspiration. The surprising fact is that — even with all the similarities: the pushing puzzles, the hookshot, the waking up on the beach, the identical audio cues, and the almost cloned enemies (down to their very animations) — Castaway reminded us of other SNES and Game Boy games even more.

Castaway is a very short game. It took us around 30 minutes to beat the three bosses that represent the main threats on 'The Island', the story mode, and to rescue our cute little dog that was kidnapped during the opening cutscene. We spent about an hour on the secondary mode, 'The Tower', where we battled our way through 50 floors of increasing difficulty. Addiction took hold a little as we rolled here and there, picking up gold coins from fallen enemies and unlocking new powers – shields, sword buffs, even a protective orb circling the character like in a side-scrolling shooter. We appreciated that this mode was a crafted experience, with no sign of randomly generated levels.

However, throughout both game modes there only four main enemy types, all a variation on the theme of a four-legged crab-type creature — from a standard red one to a tower-headed, orb-firing blue variation — and three physically identical bosses (though their attack patterns are each unique, and they provide three very different fights). So there's not much in the way of variety.


The graphics are crisp, colorful, and pleasingly animated without pushing the boat out – bees flutter around the island, the water dips and falls. The music hits some slightly lesser notes – the main theme is an okay Zelda homage, and the tunes in the caves were a little plodding. We didn't love either, but they do their jobs. The game runs well for the most part with just the smallest hint of slowdown in The Tower when we'd boosted our run with not one but two protective orbs and there were a lot of enemies on screen.

In Castaway's defense, a robust speed-running mode is available from the start. Other than that, pacifist and invincible difficulty settings (alongside normal and unfair) open the game up for younger kids and inexperienced players.

The thing is, Castaway most reminded us of inferior Zelda clones from back in the '90s. There's just something about the slowness of the character that we found a bit frustrating. The overall simplicity of both gameplay options makes it difficult to fully recommend to anyone other than die-hard genre fans. There are no NPCs to talk to, no quirky alligators, villagers, or owls to add variety to the experience - all that's left is an incredibly short and unoriginal, if pretty, action RPG.