HomeNewsOcean’s Heart

Ocean’s Heart is out, uses this one extremely common key art composition I can’t resistIt gets me every time

It gets me every time

An image from a Hyper Light Drifter cutscene, showing the protagonist looking over a landscape.

An image from a Ni no Kuni cutscene, showing the protagonist looking over a landscape.

An image from Genshin Impact, showing one of the protagonists looking over a landscape.

Ocean’s Heartis a Zelda-like, in the sense that it’s a 2D, top-down sword swinger in the vein of Link To The Past. That means you’ll never see the kind of vista that’s in its key art (top left, above). You’ll never see that beautiful blue sky. And yet, and yet, I cannot resist the promise of a piece of art like that. I click on every game that uses it.

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Cover image for YouTube video

Ocean’s Heart really is a Zelda-like. You swing your sword and fire arrows, and descend into dungeons to solve environment puzzles and beat up baddies and open treasure chests. It’s sprite art is really cute, with sweet little marketplaces and rainy plains and strange crow beasts. There’s also crafting and magic shenanigans going on.

But really it’s the key art that drew me to it. It was the same sort of image that first drew me toGenshin Impactlate last year, another game that was consciously riffing on Zelda tropes. It’s appealing for fairly obvious reasons. The blue sky, the green, lush landscape, and the promise of interesting places to explore.

Ocean’s Heart is out nowon Steam and will cost you £13.50/$15/€15.