Castaway Review (Switch eShop) | Nintendo Life
We almost challenged ourselves to write this review without mentioning Link’s Awakening. But certainly as a classic 2D RPG that includes hackable bushes, Derelict has too many similarities to Nintendo’s classics to be unworkable. Although we’d prefer a fresher take on the formula like the recent game KudzuTo be fair, Canari Games (Moon) makes no attempt to hide its Castaway inspiration. The surprising truth is that — even with all the similarities: push puzzles, hooks, waking up on a beach, identical audio cues, and nearly cloned enemies (even down to their animations) — Castaway reminded us of other SNES and Game Boy games are even more numerous.
Castaway is a very short game. It took us about 30 minutes to defeat the three bosses that represent the main threats on ‘The Island’, the story mode, and rescue our cute little dog that was kidnapped in the opening cutscene. We spent about an hour in the secondary mode, ‘The Tower’, where we fought our way through 50 floors of increasing difficulty. The addictiveness started to set in a bit as we rolled around, picking up gold coins from fallen enemies and unlocking new powers – shields, power-up swords, even a protective orb that rotated around the character like in a side-scrolling shooter. We appreciated that this mode was a crafted experience, with no hint of randomly generated levels.
However, in both game modes, there are only four main enemy types, all of which are variations of a crab-like, four-legged creature—ranging from a standard red one to a tower-headed, orb-shooting blue variant—and three physically identical bosses (though each of their attack patterns is unique, and they offer three very different combat styles). So there’s not a lot of variety.
The graphics are crisp, colourful and pleasantly animated without pushing the boat too far – bees flutter around the island, water dips and falls. The music hits some slightly lighter notes – the main theme is a decent Zelda tribute, and the cave tune is a bit sluggish. We didn’t love either, but they get the job done. The game runs well for the most part with only the slightest slowdown in The Tower when we increased our running speed with not one but two guard orbs and there were plenty of enemies on screen.
To protect Castaway, a powerful rush mode is available from the start. Additionally, a peaceful and invincible mode (along with normal and unfair modes) opens up the game to young children and inexperienced players.
The thing is, Castaway reminds us of the lesser Zelda clones from the 90s. There’s just something about the slowness of the characters that makes us feel a little uncomfortable. The overall simplicity of both gameplay options makes it hard to fully recommend to anyone other than fans of the genre. 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 extremely short, albeit beautiful, action-RPG that doesn’t do anything new.
