• Price: $14.99 USD
• Developer: Max Mraz
• Publisher: Nordcurrent Labs
• Release Date: February 10, 2022

A review code was kindly provided by Nordcurrent Labs. We thank them for being able to cover this game by developer Max Mraz.

Check out this AMA held by developer Max Mraz on Reddit last year!

Ocean’s Heart has you play as Tilia, a young girl whose father goes missing after he leaves to rescue a girl taken from the village by pirates. He’ll be back home in a week or two, he said. He’ll be fine, he said. Six months later and there’s no sign of him. Tilia’s father is a “volunteer navyman,” and she wants to follow in his footsteps. She becomes more and more concerned with his absence, and so she leaves her village to try and find him.

At first, you will only be able to make it to another town by boat. Your goal is to find Tilia’s father, but you can also complete side quests as you try to gather information on his whereabouts. The game has clear inspirations from The Legend of Zelda, but interestingly enough, many of the enemies you face in Ocean’s Heart are humans. I’d say that most of the enemies are still monsters/animals, but I’d argue that some humans could be categorized as monsters too, so there’s that.

As you travel around, you end up helping someone early on in the game, and they conveniently have a boat they’ll let you use to travel around the map. Fast travel in games is one of my favorite conveniences, so I loved having the ability to get around quickly that early on. Having a map was helpful, but some places were not listed (ie Zephyr Bay), which made it hard to remember where those places were and required me to backtrack to find them.

Tilia uses a sword to protect herself. For me, it was a bit of an odd choice to use B for attacking instead of A or Y. I also inadvertently confirmed I wanted to do something instead of denying it when I pressed B, so I lost some money doing that. What I liked was that I was able to travel around and acquire more hearts, items, and skills before really advancing the main quest. I’ve always enjoyed doing that and becoming “OP” in games before continuing the story. 🤩

Some of the items you find are additional weapons like a bow 🏹, a spear, a boomerang, and more. The arrow transportation upgrade was really neat. You are able to use “coral ore” to upgrade the strength of your sword and your bow. You can also upgrade your armor’s defenses. Upgrading certain skills is possible if you find the right areas to do so.

I appreciated being able to craft items with the ingredients I gathered out in the wild, as it saved me money when I made healing items myself. I liked being able to buy or craft elixirs that allow you to revive and remain in battle should you run out of hearts. You can craft these items in stores and in certain people’s homes. One problem I had was that for some craftable items, there weren’t descriptions explaining the items’ uses either when you craft them or look at them in your inventory. Some items are explained when you first acquire them, but if you forget the purpose you’ll have to use them to find out.

Another thing that could be improved upon slightly is the quest system. I wish that there were the standard exclamation point quest markers above the heads of people with quests. It would have been nice to have more detailed notes in the quest log in case I couldn’t remember something. I will say that some of the puzzles for quests were relatively easy to figure out, thankfully. I also found it funny when I was purposefully wandering around to get more “powerful” and a guy was commenting on me being there early or something.

The game did occasionally over-explain some of the mechanics, I think. “Save often” and “you can move these crates” felt pretty obvious. Also, I have to say that I wish that it was easier to make money. In The Legend of Zelda, for example, I recall easily getting rupees in the grass. Here, destroying grass or other plants doesn’t provide you with money – just crafting ingredients from the designated plants. It was a little difficult to consistently farm for ingredients. The only way I could make much money was by doing quests.

The frame rate also slowed down a lot in the dungeon where you find the bow and arrows. I believe there was one other dungeon where the frame rate slowed down. Other than those two instances though, it was smooth sailing. 🛥 🌊 😉 I really liked the vibrant graphics and the music.

For those who want more of a challenge, you can eventually access an area where you can choose to increase the strength of the enemies you encounter. As I like to play in easy mode, I chose not to activate this mode. But I know many people do enjoy playing more difficult modes, so it’s a good feature to have!

Sometimes the game could admittedly feel a little too referential to The Legend of Zelda. The blade traps, Keese/bats, the “Navi” looking characters, and the Leevers all felt too similar for me. There’s also the similarity in terms of having a blonde protagonist. I did appreciate the game having a female protagonist, and I also liked that she wasn’t a silent protagonist.

I enjoyed the occasional humor in the dialogue (as well as the amusing signage outside of so-called “secret” hideouts). But I did feel like the plot wasn’t sufficiently expanded in terms of character interactions. The ending felt very abrupt as well.

I think one of Ocean Heart’s main strengths would have to be the exploration elements. Exploring and finding secrets was a lot of fun. The game isn’t perfect but it’s still entertaining.

Switch it ON or Switch it OFF? Ocean’s Heart is a cute Zelda-like game with a variety of neat weapons and skills used to help you discover the secrets of the lands around you. There isn’t a ton of dialogue and character interactions, but what’s there is cleverly written. Some aspects could have been explained more, but overall it’s an ocean’s breeze to play, with an option for higher difficulty for veterans. 7.5/10