Master Key dropped May 17th on Steam and Nintendo Switch after a successful kickstarter. Published and coded by Achromi with art by Antoine Denglos and music by Noe Guiton, Master Key is a retro style zelda clone. The game features a, in my estimate, 6-8 hour main story with many more hours in bonus content. You can play a demo of Master Key on Steam. The full game is $11.99 and comes highly recommended by yours truly.
Cryptic Fox-like Game
I had more or less forgotten about this kickstarter until I received an email notification that the game was ready to play! I try to play and review a game every week, but Master Key managed to consume a good two weeks. It took awhile to beat this one, requiring several breaks to calm the nerves and review my hand written notes.
I have decided, now that I’ve seen two of these kinds of games (looking at you, Tunic), to call this kind of game a “cryptic fox-like”. Your main character, a small fox, goes on a zelda style quest to save the land. You spend most of your time scouring the world for cryptic messages and secrets that would have made me cry if it had been in an actual Zelda game. Master Key manages to pull back the esoteric punch just before it breaks my spirit and leaves many of its secrets as bonuses to the inquisitive player.
Gameplay a la Gameboy Zelda
This game really, really reminds me of link’s Awakening and Oracle of Ages and Seasons. The music and tone, the color choices, the design of dungeons and the overworld, and the actual gameplay. While this game does make use of the modern convenience of having more than two buttons on your controller, you are still very much making decisions about which of your items you want to use. The dungeons and boss fights in this game are loosely themed around the items acquired in their respective areas. Progression is blocked primarily by restricting access to these items. Combat is simple, but effective.
Music from the Past
The soundtrack in this game almost seems to have borrowed the soundfont from Capcom’s Zelda games. I love the music in this. It does such an excellent job of setting the mood for each scene, creating a feeling of comfort and melancholy, while also able to ramp up the atmosphere for more intense combat scenes and austere areas. One critic that I will make, is that the sound effects for enemies, while good, did have a tendency to distort when more than ten or twelve mobs were on my screen. That could very well be a me problem, but I did experience the issue. Honestly, it doesn’t come up very often.
Art and Palette Swaps
Master Key uses a two toned color palette that can be swapped at whim. While I did play with the settings for a while, I played the entire game on more or less on color pallette. It’s a nice feature though. The pixel art for enemies and environments is surprisingly expressive for being so low bit. I rarely had any issues deciphering what I was looking at on the screen, even though everything was black and white. I give the art designer major props for making this game’s art design so expressive and easy to look at.
Building a community
Master Key seems to be building some momentum with its community. More and more people are searching for the bonus items that are hidden in the game, and tampering with the many puzzles in the game itself. Check out the steam community forums and discord for active members trying to solve the many mysteries of Master Key.
Closing Remarks
If Achromi and his team are reading this, thank you so much for making a great game. I am beyond impressed and wish you the very best with your sales on this project. I hope that we will see more from you in the future. Dear readers, go buy this game. Leave it a review. They deserve it, ,and you will absolutely enjoy this one.
Oh… did I mention that it comes with over 100 nongrams in the menu? I love those things.