Bone Oblitum really captures the feel of Zelda, particularly its top-down entries on the SNES and GameBoy. The difference being that it's a little darker in tone, a little more accepting of blood and bones, but without being all edgy about it.
What we have here is a demo, and a fairly polished one at that, dropping you in the deep end of a challenging dungeon populated by skeletal creatures. You might collect bones instead of rupees, but, from the art style to the character movement, the big chests holding useful tools to the colour-coded switch puzzles, this is unashamedly Zelda. And it's wonderful playing a game that gets all that stuff right.
It's not done yet, but developer Siltocyn has come up with an intriguing world here, with beautiful pixel art, an adorable hero and, in this demo, a satisfying slice of game to chew upon. Give it a go if you love Zelda, if that upcoming remake of Link's Awakening can't come soon enough.
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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.
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