As someone who backed this game on Kickstarter I can safely say I’m satisfied with the final product we got!

The game is a love letter to the old top down Zelda games. In fact it’s so faithful to old Zelda games that it also carried over the difficulty of them.

I’m getting a little ahead of myself though. Presentation wise I love the simplistic 2 color art style of the game. It’s at the same time nostalgic and modern.

The world feels like it’s straight from a Zelda game but it still has its own identity. There is no dialogue in the game with all the characters speaking with images that for the most part are clear.

I did get lost a bit playing the game but overall I did eventually figure it out after exploring for awhile. One tip I will give is buy things from the shops, they hold items that will give you access to the dungeons.

Speaking of dungeons they’re all pretty good! It seems like you can tackle them in any order but I think I ended up doing them in the suggested order. My favourite of them was the mansion dungeon.

Now let’s talk difficulty. There are times where I felt it was unfair. I died 91 times over my 12 hours of gameplay. Enemies do a lot of damage and can lock you in place if your against a wall or something. When you die you respond with only 5 health even if you’ve extended it. So a lot of time is spent either grinding your health back or spending your money to buy a healing item.

One cool thing I forgot to mention earlier is that money and health pickups are the same so when you collect a coin you regain half a heart. This was a pretty intuitive choice that I really liked.

I think the difficulty could be helped by either adding more knockback to your attack or making the character intangible after getting hit so they can go through the enemies.

Now one of the games many color pallets is one that makes the game easier but I never used it. On top of that I have heard the creator is adding a difficulty slider with a very easy to very hard option. With that said if what I played is considered the normal difficulty I still think it’s a bit on the tough side.

Interestingly most of the time it was just the normal enemies giving me issues. Bosses were difficult at times but not impossible to learn. The final boss was pretty challenging but I had found so many items to make me strong enough that it only took a couple tries.

Overall the game is very good and you should play it if you like the NES, SNES or Gameboy Zelda games. The puzzles and presentation are there. Plus if your a fan of picross the game just has a whole picross side mode, which is a little weird but I love picross so I don’t mind!

I haven’t felt this conflicted about a game in a long time. Master Key is, in most ways, a “5/5” experience—something I’m truly glad I played, something I should be able to recommend to anyone with even the slightest affinity towards 2D top-down Zeldas. The sense of exploration and mystery scratches my itch for a “new old school Zelda” in the way that I haven’t felt since A Link Between Worlds. And even that game wasn’t completely “new”, because it reused a map and dungeon philosophies from its previous game on SNES. I should be able to succinctly go, “If you want a new Zelda and you don’t mind the monochrome/2-color palette, by all means pick this up. SO worth it.”

…But the combat, y’all. I hated the combat so much that it almost ruined the whole thing. Achromi decided to make this game “NES hard” and they didn’t have to. Your character never, ever feels strong enough. A Link to the Past (and every subsequent Zelda) has moments when you’re weak, and it steadily builds up to moments where you feel like a god. Take when you first get the Master Sword in that game, for example. From the moment you pull it from its pedestal until you get to the next chapter of the game, you can kill even tougher enemies in a single hit. And then you get to where you’re going and you’re weak again for a while, until you build yourself back up with more optional stuff.

Master Key doesn’t have any “moments of strength” at all. You’re always glass. You never hit like a truck. Bosses have way too much health—they start out fun, but 4 out of 5 severely wear out their welcome when you die against them sixteen times. It’d be slightly more agreeable if the game’s checkpoints weren’t obtusely placed. Go out exploring and stray far from the village where you crossed your last checkpoint, then die? Well, you’re gonna spend the whole time trekking back to where you were—presumably only to die once more. At least the older Zeldas had the decency to spit you out at the last door, cave, or dungeon you entered.

I’m dead serious, though—when I wasn’t cussing it out, this is the most fun I’ve ever had with an indie Zelda-like. My friend and I like, played through this game together…sharing our secrets and helping each other find tools and upgrades like we were kids back in elementary school. I can’t recommend this experience enough—if you LIKE tough-as-nails cheap shots from the late 80s...or someone’s interpretation of how those old games worked. I hear there’s a difficulty slider on Steam that includes a Very Easy mode that, like, doubles your damage and health?

I may replay the game again when that hits Switch. Lord knows the already included "Easy Mode" you get by selecting a specific color palette didn't save me or my patience. I was obstinate enough to spend several hours fighting the final boss tonight, and I finally won. I feel like a million dollars AND hot garbage at the same time—which about sums up my experience with Master Key. It’s a million dollar game almost ruined by (in my opinion, of course) “stinky” combat.

When I look back on Link’s Awakening, Minish Cap, the Oracle games, etc, I don’t think to myself, “Gosh, the combat in these games absolutely kicks butt.” It’s about puzzles, exploration, vibes, and world-building. The combat is just a means to an end.

With Master Key, the combat and arbitrary difficulty gets in the way of everything truly spectacular about this game. Truly a love-hate relationship with this one. I’m so glad I played it. But I ain’t touching it again (no matter how much I may want to!) until the combat is truly addressed.

Master Key is a top-down adventure game with no text of any kind. The game resembles a metroidvania in that even using the abilities you find is a kind of puzzle, rewarding experimentation and exploration. This aspect of the game is amazing, unfortunately it's somewhat outweighed by the poorly-tuned and uninteresting combat.

The game world is small enough to run across in a minute, the perfect size I think for this style of game. Mysteries and secrets are packed into every screen and very little is off-limits to the player even at the start. This means every new ability you find is likely to remind you of at least a couple spots you think you can make use of it.

Dungeons are self-contained puzzles. If you can enter one you can complete it 100% without ever leaving. It took me a little while to trust this principle because the game expects a much higher level of curiosity and experimentation than most modern games. The final (optional) dungeon is a masterclass in hiding correct solutions in plain sight.

While the combat is a little awkward right from the start, it's fine while you're still dealing with 1-2 hit enemies and are close by to respawn points anyway. Later on you'll be expected to backtrack over yourself 100 times to figure out the game's secrets all while enemy health numbers balloon. I recommend turning the game's difficulty down to its lowest as soon as you start to feel frustrated, but prepare to be bored anyway because even at the lowest difficulty late-game enemies still take a pounding.