Developer James Swiney, who you may be familiar with by way of the awesome Hectic Space retro-inspired shooter games, is working on yet another throwback to the earlier days of gaming, this time focusing on the action RPG genre. This new game is called Aruna’s Adventure and it harkens back to the original 8-bit The Legend of Zelda game with its top-down perspective and more than 400 handcrafted screens that are stitched together to make for 3 large overworld areas and 6 sprawling dungeons. The titular hero Aruna can dash, strike, and use special weapon attacks as she squares off against all manner of enemies in the overworld as well as some very cool looking boss fights. You’ll also earn coins from defeating enemies as well as find some hidden in chests which you can then use to purchase new equipment at the various shops around the world. Check out the trailer for Aruna’s Adventure.
Visually Aruna’s Adventure looks to fall somewhere in between the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, as it’s a lot more detailed than what was possible on the NES but isn’t quite like what you’d see on the SNES. Whatever the inspiration, I really dig the look. And just because Aruna’s Adventure is retro-inspired that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some welcome modern touches like autosaving, cloud syncing for game saves, full controller support including in menus, Game Center achievements, and even 120fps support for iPad Pro devices. If Aruna’s Adventure has you drooling as much as I am, you can look forward to it releasing as a fully premium game for $4.99 next week on September 23rd, and until that time you can find some discussion about the game in our forums.
