Draco and the Seven Scales: Link's Awakening, but make it pirates

Yo ho, Zelda fans. Draco and the Seven Scales is a crunchy Game Boy-style top-down adventure where you play a pirate captain out to save his greatest treasure, which means seven dungeons, more than 15 items, fishing, a kraken's dodgy bargain, and a soundtrack stuffed with sea shanties. Bosses include a Great Macaw and your rival Captain Henny, so the tone is exactly as fun as it sounds.

The hook is that you swap between exploring on foot and sailing your ship, and the puzzles are built around both, and your ship's cannons get upgrades too. That land-and-sea idea keeps getting remixed dungeon after dungeon, and the pixel art adds colorful twists to the classic green-screen look. A week after launch, it's still sitting on a flawless thumbs-up streak, and people who've rolled credits are finishing it in roughly 11 to 17 hours.

Caveats are mild. It's retro to the bone, so if the old Game Boy look leaves you cold, this won't convert you. Genre vets will find the challenge fair rather than brutal. Launch week brought a quick run of softlock and controller fixes, and it's Windows-only for now.