8 games similar to The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening — handpicked for fans of Action and Adventure games.
Link’s Awakening captured something rare: a compact, dreamlike adventure that packed genuine emotional weight and clever dungeon design into a handheld cartridge, wrapping it all in a surprisingly melancholic story. Fans of this Game Boy classic tend to crave that same alchemy of tight top-down exploration, satisfying puzzle-solving, and a world that feels alive despite its small scale — these picks deliver exactly that.
SNES | 1991 The spiritual blueprint that Link’s Awakening refined and miniaturized, A Link to the Past shares the same top-down perspective, dungeon-crawling structure, and item-gating exploration that defines the series at its best. The Light and Dark World mechanic adds a layer of complexity that fans of Koholint Island’s secrets will immediately appreciate. If Link’s Awakening left you wanting more room to breathe, this is the definitive next step.
Game Boy Color | 2001 Designed as a direct spiritual successor to Link’s Awakening, Oracle of Ages is the closest thing to a sequel in tone and feel — same handheld scale, same Capcom-era dungeon craft, and a time-travel mechanic that rewards the same careful, curious exploration. The puzzle density is even higher than Link’s Awakening, making it essential for fans who loved working out the logic of each room. Its linked-game connection with Oracle of Seasons doubles the adventure when you’re ready for more.
Game Boy Color | 2001 Where Oracle of Ages leans on puzzles, Oracle of Seasons leans on action and world-traversal, using a rod that shifts the environment between seasons to unlock new paths and secrets. It matches Link’s Awakening’s sense of a living, layered overworld where revisiting old areas after a new item always reveals something fresh. The two Oracle games together represent the high-water mark of portable Zelda design in the classic era.
SNES | 1993 Secret of Mana shares Link’s Awakening’s action-RPG soul — real-time combat, an expanding toolkit of weapons and spells, and a world opened up progressively as you grow more powerful. Its lush, painterly presentation and emotionally resonant story hit the same bittersweet notes that make Link’s Awakening’s ending so memorable. The cooperative multiplayer is a bonus, but it plays beautifully solo as a pure adventure.
SNES | 1994 Illusion of Gaia is an action-adventure with a surprisingly mature, melancholic story — a thematic cousin to Link’s Awakening’s dream-world narrative. Its compact, focused design strips away menus and inventories in favor of pure exploration and combat momentum, much like the streamlined feel of Koholint. The game’s willingness to ask genuine questions about life and loss gives it an emotional gravity rare for the era.
SNES | 1992 Soul Blazer pairs top-down action combat with a satisfying loop of liberating NPCs to restore a depopulated world — every cleared monster den brings a village back to life in a way that feels purposeful and rewarding. The sense of a world slowly awakening around you mirrors the layered, interconnected feel of Link’s Awakening’s Koholint Island. It’s a shorter, tighter game that punches well above its obscurity.
Game Boy | 1995 A Game Boy classic that shares Link’s Awakening’s charming visual style, tight handheld design, and deceptively deep hidden-content structure. Collecting the Rainbow Drops requires the same methodical, return-and-revisit mentality as hunting down Link’s Awakening’s secret seashells and trading sequence items. It proves the original Game Boy hardware was capable of genuine emotional and mechanical richness.
Sega Master System | 1989 One of the earliest examples of a Metroidvania-style adventure with the intimate scale and quirky charm of Link’s Awakening, Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap chains together transformation abilities that open up a compact world in endlessly satisfying ways. Its monster-filled overworld and gradual power accumulation feel directly ancestral to what Nintendo refined on the Game Boy. The 2017 remake makes it more accessible, but the original holds up remarkably well.
Link’s Awakening belongs to a specific design tradition: the compact action-adventure where a small, carefully constructed world rewards curiosity more than raw power. Every room has a reason, every item opens new possibilities in old spaces, and the overworld itself functions almost like a puzzle. The games above all share this philosophy — they trust the player to explore, backtrack, and connect dots without hand-holding, and they build worlds dense enough to justify that trust.
What unites these recommendations at a deeper level is tone. Link’s Awakening is unusual among action-adventures for carrying genuine emotional weight — its dream-logic story and quiet, slightly melancholic ending linger long after the credits. Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, and Secret of Mana all reach for that same register: adventure games that aren’t afraid to be a little sad, a little strange, and a little more meaningful than their pixel counts suggest. Whether it’s the handheld intimacy of the Oracle games or the bittersweet world-building of Illusion of Gaia, these are games that stay with you.
| Feature | Platform | Year | Score | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past | SNES | 1991 | 9.9 | Action, Adventure |
| The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages | GAME-BOY-COLOR | 2001 | 9 | Action, RPG |
| The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons | GAME-BOY-COLOR | 2001 | 9 | Action, RPG |
| Secret of Mana | SNES | 1993 | 9.3 | RPG, Action |
| Illusion of Gaia | SNES | 1993 | 8.8 | Action, RPG |
| Soul Blazer | SNES | 1992 | 8.6 | Action, RPG |
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Widely considered the greatest action-adventure game ever made. A Link to the Past perfected the top-down Zelda formula with its Light World/Dark World duality, 12 intricate dungeons, and a richly realized Hyrule.
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One half of Capcom's Zelda pair for Game Boy Color — Oracle of Ages focuses on puzzle-solving and time travel, sending Link between past and present Labrynna to restore peace and defeat Veran.
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One half of Capcom's Zelda pair for Game Boy Color — Oracle of Seasons focuses on action and the Rod of Seasons, letting Link alter the four seasons to transform Holodrum's landscape and access new areas.
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The SNES action RPG masterpiece. Secret of Mana's real-time combat, gorgeous visuals, three-player simultaneous multiplayer, and Hiroki Kikuta's transcendent score created one of the genre's defining classics.
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The middle entry in Quintet's Soul Blazer trilogy — a globe-trotting action RPG following Will's journey through historical wonders (Incan ruins, Great Wall, Nazca Lines) with transformations into two powerful alternate forms.
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The first entry in Quintet's soul trilogy — Soul Blazer has the player acting as an angel defeating demons and restoring souls to a corrupted world, resurrecting villagers and NPCs as enemies are cleared.
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HAL Laboratory's superb Game Boy sequel introduces the beloved animal friends Rick, Kine, and Coo — a hamster, fish, and owl — who transform Kirby's copy abilities into entirely new forms depending on which companion he rides. The game's clever mechanic depth and consistently inventive level design make it one of the most feature-rich platformers on Nintendo's portable hardware, rewarding thorough players who seek out the Rainbow Drops needed to unlock the true final boss.
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One of the Sega Master System's greatest achievements and a pioneering open-world action RPG. Wonder Boy III casts players as a hero cursed to transform between five animal forms — Lizard-Man, Mouse-Man, Piranha-Man, Lion-Man, and Hawk-Man — each with unique abilities needed to explore the interconnected world. Remade in 2017, it remains a masterpiece of 8-bit design.