I grew up with the original Game Boy, so The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening will always hold a special place in my personal fandom. It's an important game from a historical standpoint, but it still holds up today. It's also a game that has inspired many other developers, so when I saw screens from Castaway, which unabashedly wore its inspiration on its sleeve, I knew it was a game I had to check out.

Developed and self-published by Canari Games, Castaway was created by a small team with a limited budget. As a result, it is small in scope, but it is also small in price. Most players should expect around 4-5 hours of gameplay with a MSRP of $7.99 USD.

Split into two parts, Castaway includes a short story mode and a challenge mode called the Tower.

Story mode introduces us to the hero of the game and the game mechanics needed to master to complete a run through the Tower. You are in a spaceship in orbit above a planet when a massive laser beam cuts your ship in half. The crew abandons ship, and your escape pod crashes on the beach on the planet below. Unfortunately, your items (and your dog!) have been taken by monsters and hidden in three different dungeons.

The concept and execution of Castaway's story mode is very Zelda-lite. You have a small overworld to explore and two weapons to acquire. You start the adventure with a sword and end up getting both a pickaxe and a hookshot. You get the pickaxe after beating the first dungeon, and you receive the hookshot once you clear the second dungeon.

Both weapons can be used to attack enemies. The pickaxe is slow but strong, while the hookshot allows you to attack at range, but it is weaker than your sword. The two items are used for puzzle-solving and world traversal. The pickaxe allows you to break rocks that would otherwise block your progress, while the hookshot can be used to cross gaps or retrieve distant items. Despite being a short experience, Castaway's story mode makes good use of environmental puzzles that require players to use tools to progress.

Each of the three dungeons is similar to the overworld in that they are short but sweet. You'll find that there is a small puzzle to solve, enemies to beat, a key to collect, and a boss to defeat. None of the boss patterns are overly complex, but there is enough of a challenge to give you a sense of accomplishment after beating them.

All of Castaway's story elements come together well, but the experience itself lasts less than an hour. It really is a bite-sized adventure. Once you complete the story mode, the Tower unlocks — and that's where the real challenge lies.

The Tower consists of 51 single-screen rooms, all of which have to be beaten in a single run to successfully complete this mode. If the story mode is Zelda-lite, Tower mode is roguelike lite. You only have one life (die and you start over), and the available power-ups are randomized on every run. This means there is a bit of luck mixed in with skill. Better power-up choices make for easier runs.

One of the big challenges in the Tower is collecting coins from enemies because those contribute to your level. Every time your character reaches a new level, you earn a power-up. Coins appear when enemies are defeated but disappear quickly, so you have to be smart about how you approach a level and where you eliminate an opponent. If you kill a creature but cannot get to the coins before they vanish, it takes that much longer to level up.

Every five levels, there is a health room that contains coins and if you are injured, food. If you are not injured, you get more coins and can level up faster.

This is where the luck of the draw comes in with the power-ups. The shield regenerates after every room, so if you get a shield or two early on, you are more likely to reach a health room with your hearts at max and earn additional coins.

The precision required for the Tower is where one of my complaints comes in. When you use a dash move, you dash in the last direction your character was moving. The problem is that your character can move in eight directions, but the character sprite only faces four directions. If you are moving at an angle, stop, and then try to dash, you won't dash in the direction you're facing — but rather the direction you were moving before you stopped. This led me to a lot of second-guessing, as I was never 100% sure which direction I would dash off in when I tapped that button.

Another issue has to do with the Tower not staying unlocked. I'm not sure if this is specific to the Xbox version of the game, but in the release version of Castaway, the Tower does not stay unlocked between play sessions. The game tracks your progress, but if you quit and re-open Castaway, you cannot go directly back into the Tower. Instead, you have to reload a save from story mode and defeat the last boss to re-open the Tower. It's a minor bug, but it would be nice to not have to deal with it.

Visually, Castaway has some fantastic pixel art. It is absolutely a throwback to the 16-bit era in terms of color and vibrancy as well as sprite design. That said, pixel art on a big screen can look rough when it is an LCD and not a CRT. I reviewed Castaway on the Xbox One X and Xbox Series X, with the game outputting to 55" 4K LCD TV and a 28" 4K LCD monitor. Performance was fine on both, but I did find myself wishing for a scanline filter. To that end, I suspect Castaway would look better on a smaller screen, such as the Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck. I did try streaming it to my phone for a bit, and the smaller screen seemed to look better.

If you're looking for a 30- to 40-hour adventure, Castaway is not for you. If you can appreciate a budget-priced, bite-sized love letter to a gaming classic, Castaway is right up your alley. For a busy gamer, the short play sessions are a plus, not a negative, and the speedrun mode adds additional replay value.

Score: 8.0/10