Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds has been on my list to play for quite a while, but only during the 2020 quarantine did I finally have time to pull it out again. This game reminds me why I fell in love with Zelda games in the first place. There’s no Navi, following you around. It’s good old-fashioned exploration, and kinesthetic and environmental learning.
Being stuck inside the house during quarantine, I wanted to escape. I wanted to see any landscape other than the one out my window, in my yard, or down the small stretch of street that was safe for us to walk each day. Unable to wander and explore outside, I fell into the Hyrule and Lorule of A Link Between Worlds. I looked for every bottle, every heart container, and every Maimai. I hadn’t been this much of a completionist since my Donkey Kong 64 days.
I’m a kinesthetic learner. I don’t read instruction manuals, and I don’t process auditory instructions well. I was the kid who took apart her pens and reassembled them during class. I’m the kind of gamer (and writer) who tries the same thing over and over, learning each time, until I’ve mastered a skill. And A Link Between Worlds creates such a wonderful playground for this. Few things are outright told to you, or commanded of you.
There’s a magic to having all the tools you need in your pocket, and just wandering around and playing with them. I love that you start the game with most of the tools you’ll need. This means much of the game play is experimental, reaching an obstacle and playing with what you have to see how you can surmount it. For example, there’s a place where I found a partial heart container on a building. At first I climbed up a cliff and tried to get it with my grappling hook. When that didn’t work, I tried the tornado stick to jump onto it. I went through my tools, one by one, looking for a solution. Finally I realized I needed to grab a Cucco and fly with it across the gap onto the platform.
The puzzles in this game are particularly fresh because there are a range of ways to use the tools given to you. Bombs can open loose rocks into caves, but they can also be thrown to turn on hard-to-reach switches. They can help you discover invisible entrances into cliff sides, knock over turtle enemies, and escape to a lower floor in cracked dungeon floors. Grappling hooks can cross distances, pull switches, pull enemies out of their shells, and bring distant items to you. Functional fixedness is a standard concept in games—it’s complicated to account for creative uses of objects. However, A Link Between Worlds encourages play. This game has delighted me so many times, giving me a satisfying result from my play.
A common Zelda trope is to give you an item, give you a dungeon where you use that item, and then a boss that must be defeated with said item. There is some of this in A Link Between Worlds but it’s made far more interesting in how multiple items are often required to progress, and also in how subtly the game teaches you to master the items you hold—and use them creatively. One of my favorite examples of this was Skull Woods. When you enter, a floating hand will try to attack you. I quickly decided to approach this enemy by running from it, then slashing it when it was down. However, I entered a room where there were switches I couldn’t reach. Over time I realized the enemy had to be manipulated to hit the switches: you stand under the switches, wait for it to hit you, and it hits the switch instead. The lesson I learned was: use your enemy to accomplish your tasks for you. As I approached the final boss (a hand with an eye in it!) I implemented this lesson to defeat him. It’s a more nuanced take on educating a player on how to beat the game, and less predictable, as you have an arsenal of tools to use and combo to tackle the task at hand.
This kinesthetic learning is in sharp contrast to some of the Zelda line’s other titles. During quarantine, I also tried to play Windwaker, but felt disengaged because I realized I felt like I was taking the SATs instead of playing a game: read a passage, answer comprehension questions, repeat. Read a bunch of dialogue from a million town folks, then determine from that where you’re supposed to go next. The puzzles were solved less from exploration and discovery, and more from studying and then taking a test. When I want to read, I pick up a book. But when I pick up a Zelda game, I want to be left alone to explore.
Playing these two Zelda games, it made me think of the popular truism that going to school is about “learning how to learn.” I think a similar thing could be said for games. Good games teach you how to learn about a game. A Link Between Worlds gives players a playground to learn and experiment with a set of given tools, as well as helpful references like the fortune teller and map if they ever get stuck. It never talks down to the player but treats them as capable and intelligent, which makes each win all the more satisfying. With each new game I play, I learn something about what makes a good game, and what makes a good story. Even more so though, I learn something about myself. Playing A Link Between Worlds, I realized that even though I haven’t played an action-adventure game in a while, I am still an explorer at heart, and, given the right game, can still get lost in the magic of a far-away world.
Meg Eden is the author of the novel "Post-High School Reality Quest” (2017), and the poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” (2020). She runs the Magfest MAGES Library blog, which posts accessible academic articles about video games (https://super.magfest.org/mages-blog). Find her online at www.megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal.