You explore Hyrule as Link - or Zelda or Cadence, zapped in from a distant world, each character having their own special abilities and available in co-op - and it's filled with recognisable landmarks like Lake Hylia and those muddlesome woods. Cadence of Hyrule takes the world of Zelda and the combat of NecroDancer and makes them work together. Even after a deluge, even after the apocalypse, everything is in its place.Īnd yet it works. The series' defining moment, for me anyway, is that bit in Wind-Waker where Link travels beneath the surface of the Great Sea and finds Hyrule itself frozen in a bubble.

In Zelda, nothing is ever left to chance, every outcome, every possible action has been foreseen.

The pitch is gloriously weird: Crypt of the NecroDancer, a rhythm-action procedural dungeon-crawl is to be stirred together with Zelda, perhaps the least procedural game series of all time. So much about Cadence of Hyrule feels like this: a meeting of distant worlds that results in something that just snaps together as if it was meant to be, that results in something harmonious. Here is a word of our own that fits perfectly. Zelda is filled with wonderful words of its own devising. It says there is a hidden order in nature and this order is beautiful - elegant and taut and melancholic and not to be messed with. Cadence! This word is a song and a river and a waterfall.

Two designs collide gloriously in a Zelda variation that rivals the greatness of the core games themselves.Ĭonsider it for a second: cadence.

Free download cadence of hyrule zelda