Shipwreck is a strange little game. To be specific, I mean that it’s strange that it’s a pretty by-the-book Zelda wannabe that doesn’t really do anything to stand out. It’s kind of cute, I guess, but that doesn’t really make an impression on someone who almost exclusively plays cute games.
That’s me, BTW. I play a lot of cute games. Nuts to grizzled shootmans. I’ll take the doofy platforming animals and colourful block-matchers instead.
Anyhow, Shipwreck. From the outset, it just screams Link’s Awakening. You wake up on a beach in the middle of a torrential storm, your ship ostensibly wrecked, and there you find a sword and hack your way to the nearest town. Stay at the inn, and in the morning the mayor tells you that a ghost has been terrorizing the island and you’re quickly recruited to stop it.
Stopping the ghost, of course, requires you to traverse an overworld, searching for dungeons wherein your will find a collection of macguffins that unlock the last place. Along the way, you will collect tools and weapons, increase the number of hearts in your life bar, and maybe play a few simple mini-games. Sound familiar?
Shipwreck is just a little indie game though, so there are only four main dungeons (five if you include the little baby intro dungeon), one town, and a fairly small, barren overworld. Indeed, the overworld is nothing but space in between town and dungeons. It contains little other than trees to block your path and shrubs to chop down. Occasionally a house where mini-games are found. But there are no enemies, no hidden caves, no treasures, no non-tree obstacles. Fortunately, since it’s small, it’s not much of a bother.
Tools are used in exactly the same way as in Link’s Awakening: each one acquired goes into your inventory, and you can equip any two at the same time. Some are a little redundant (apples and bread, sword and pickaxe), but you get the usual adventuring kit like a shield, (cross)bow, and lantern. None of the tools combine to do something neat, à la bomb arrows or rooster boomerang.
Dungeons are where 95% of the game is spent, and thank goodness, because there are actual things to do in them. They don’t have a lot of depth to them, however. The general idea is that you wander forward until you find a) a locked door or b) a key. After you find one, you then wander in the opposite direction until you’ve found the other. Sometimes a treasure chest will contain a map or small amount of coins instead of a key. There is exactly one heart container in each dungeon, noted quite visibly on the map.
Each dungeon has a theme, none very unique. The tree dungeon is a very basic first dungeon. The mine dungeon is dark and requires that you have a lantern on your person at most times. The swamp dungeon doesn’t have any real gimmicks besides making you backtrack a whole lot. The desert dungeon is actually pretty great, having the closest approximation to puzzles in the game, and featuring all sorts of traps. The lighthouse is alright too, but not quite as great as the desert.
Obviously these dungeons aren’t going to be as complex as, say, Eagle’s Tower. But honestly, they feel more like Zelda 1 dungeons than anything. They’re a little more complex because there are switches and holes that you can sometimes fall to lower floors through, but really nothing that required much thought to get past.
Bosses are a pain in the butt. They don’t really require finesse or thought. You just run up and whack ’em until they die. If you don’t have a supply of healing items, you might have to dodge their attacks. The boss of the mines can only be hit with the pickaxe, which I guess is unique, and you’ve got to shoot the swamp boss with arrows. The tree and desert bosses are just jokes.
You may think by this review that I did not like Shipwreck. That’s only a half-truth. I did enjoy playing it, but I was admittedly underwhelmed. I feel like Brushfire Games had a good thing going here, but didn’t really put their all into it. Some sort of justification for the overworld would have been nice, and they could have made the dungeons a little more complex, considering that’s where the meat of the game is. I’m not saying they did a bad job, I’m saying I don’t think they realized their full potential.
Yeah, I realize that’s just about as damning as saying the game is outright bad. It’s like when someone says “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed.” Sorry, Brushfire Games. But hey, it was your first go. It’s pretty darn solid for a first game! I’m sure Shipwreck 2 will set the world on fire.
Shipwreck is available on PC via Steam/Humble, and also on Xbox Live Indie Games.