I had a friend recommend this game to be due to its thematic and stylistic similarities to my own game. and I've got to say, I wasn't disappointed. This is one of the only games I've played on this website where I kept playing because I wanted to, and not because I felt obligated to leave a review. This is very clearly a love letter to to the Zelda series, and boy does it show.
It's a shame that only the first zone is playable, because I felt wanting after finally visiting every corner of the map and getting (most) of the secrets. However, there are some things I did notice that I think are worth mentioning, but I still found the experience to be very enjoyable overall:
-I felt as though it took far too long to find ways to spend mana. I didn't like that I was constantly collecting it but had nothing to spend it on. I kept revisiting the central area to see if there was something I had missed. If I did, then that's just a skill issue on my end.
-I think the game would benefit from a parry mechanic of some sort, similar to how Link's shield can deflect some attacks. Without it, fighting enemies eventually felt repetitive as killing the involved the same time-and-dodge strategies over and over.
-The minimap itself is good, but I did not like how it was implemented. I saw in your Readme how you changed the minimap to switch sides so that it didn't obscure vision of the player, but I found it to be more distracting than anything. What made the original Zelda's overworld map work so well is that it was a part of the HUD and always remained in the same spot, never interfering with the player's vision. I think the way you have it set up would be better as a stand-alone screen or part of another screen, and a smaller low-resolution version could be placed in a corner of the map.
-Button presses to swim faster would be nice. I would also have liked to have an indication if I could afford to buy something without having to check my inventory every time.
-I can see you're using an object-based collision system. This led to some funny behavior if you walked up against objects like trees or gates, where you would move really fast along the side. This isn't a serious issue or anything, but I felt the need to mention it since it looks like your collision code is structured to how mine was before I completely reworked it.
-You mentioned it in the readme, but yeah keybindings would be a huge plus for this game. I don't have access to your code so I can't say for certain, but I once had the same issue with hardcoded keys and eventually transitioned to making them programmable. It was a pain to do and required changing code in a LOT of places, but the game benefited immensely from the change and my playtesters were very happy with it. I think this will be a bigger issue as your game grows in size and scope. As it stands, I found some of the controls to be kind of clunky and found myself wishing I could remap some of them. An example of this is pressing Tab to activate the minimap; it literally felt like a stretch to press the key when my fingers were centered on Z and X.
-Sector F-9 had some trees in the void.
-This game would likely benefit from having a quest system if you plan on adding a lot more of them in the future.
EDIT: I almost forgot to mention, when finding music for this game you will want to remain constant with what kinds of tracks you use. Some are almost pure chiptune while others are not, and it makes the game feel musically incoherent at times. I'm a chiptune composer myself who is writing my game's OST, so I feel like I've got to say something on this matter. ;)
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But most of the above issues were pretty minor. I really look forward to playing the finished version of this game. It definitely needs some polish, but the core loop is just so much fun. I was sad when I finally finishing exploring every part of this world's map. I can't wait for the full release.