Well, this is very different and pretty damn cool. Nintendo just announced that the people behind the excellent musical dungeon-crawling game Crypt of the NecroDancer are making a Zelda game called Cadence of Hyrule. It’s out this spring.
The game appears to bring Cadence, the protagonist from Brace Yourself Games’ hit indie, to Link’s world. A trailer shows Link and Zelda fighting enemies throughout a game world that seems inspired by the Super Nintendo game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
It looks rad.
A press release provided more details:
As Link or Princess Zelda, players explore randomly generated overworld and dungeons on a quest to save Hyrule, and every beat of the 25 remixed Legend of Zelda tunes is a chance to move, attack, defend and more. From modern-looking Lynels to the Hyrulean Soldiers of old, players must master the instinctive movements of each pixel-art enemy and strategically outstep them in rhythmic combat using an arsenal of iconic items from The Legend of Zelda, as well as the spells and weapons from Crypt of the NecroDancer.
Crypt of the NecroDancer came out for PC in 2015 and was eventually ported to numerous devices, including the Nintendo Switch in 2018. In it, players move a character through a dungeon, one grid square at a time, as enemies also move each turn based on their own rules. The magic of the game is its music, as playing effectively requires you to make your moves in accordance with the rhythm.
This will be the first of two Zelda games slated for Switch this year, the other being the recently announced remake of Game Boy classic The Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
Surprising as it is to see Nintendo offering two Zelda games in one year, it’s an even bigger shock to see Nintendo let an indie studio work with one of its biggest franchises. Sure, we’ve seen Capcom make Zelda games and Sega make an F-Zero entry (that actually happened, right?), but a Vancouver team that made a Steam indie hit getting to make something Zelda-related—that’s something else.
Fun fact: The official name of the game is Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer feat. The Legend of Zelda.