Under the Island is a 2026 action-adventure video game developed by Slime King Games and published by Top Hat Studios. It is available on Steam and for Nintendo Switch.
Nia has had better days. Her parents have uprooted the family from their old home in the big city and moved to Seashell Island, a quiet little place that's cut off from the rest of the world by storms for three months of the year, so they can study the ruins of an ancient civilization. She doubts that there will be anything exciting to do during their stay.
But she is quickly proven wrong. While her new friend Avocado gives her a tour of Koala Town, Nia touches something she shouldn't have, and they both fall into a strange cavern full of gears and machinery. There they meet Karasu, the last of the ancient Volarians, who tells them that Seashell Island is an ark built by his people – and that the ark is sinking because of four magical Gears that have gone missing.
Now Nia must set out on an epic quest to recover the Gears and save her new home. Armed with a trusty hockey stick and an arsenal of other eclectic tools and weapons, she’ll need to scour every nook and cranny of Seashell Island, getting to know its quirky and colourful inhabitants in the process.
The gameplay takes clear inspiration from The Legend of Zelda and other videogames of its ilk, while the aesthetics and trappings of the game are firmly entrenched in The '90s.
Under The Island contains examples of:
- Ability Required to Proceed: It's an Action-Adventure game inspired by The Legend of Zelda, so this is a given. There are many obstacles which can only be circumvented once Nia obtains the right tool for the job, such as boulders that must be blown up with bombs, out-of-reach switches that can only be activated by a well-trained Kiki bird, pressure plates that nearby oxen must be baited into standing on with delicious Wonder Treats, shallow pits that must be filled in by balls of dirt or snow before she can cross them, and so on.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: While exploring the Barlu Woods, Nia will eventually enter a cave where she will encounter the Great Barlu worm itself and be forced to Run or Die.
- Animate Inanimate Object: You can encounter hostile living vases with faces and legs in a few areas.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Bombs can be difficult to use in combat. While they can do a lot of damage, the fact that they take a long time to explode, and that Nia can't control how far they slide when she hits them, means that she needs to be very precise with the timing and positioning of her bombs to actually catch enemies in the explosion. The Shovel fixes these issues by letting Nia bury bombs in the ground, turning them into untimed proximity mines.
- Asteroids Monster: The Slime King splits into two slimes that are half the size of the original once Nia hits its weak spot. Each half-sized Slime King will further split into two quarter-sized Slime Kings, and the quarter-sized Slime Kings will each split into four regular slime enemies that can be killed normally.
- Beast Man: Plenty of humanoid animal people call Seashell Island their home.
- Bird People:
- The Volarians were an ancient race of bird people. Karasu looks like a humanoid crow, while the Volarian sages resemble humanoid versions of several different bird species.
- Igloo Heights is home to a community of intelligent shapeshifting penguins.
- A morbidly obese rooster-man runs a shop in the Barlu Woods.
- Block Puzzle: Whenever Nia wants to unlock a Warp Whistle station, she must solve a puzzle that involves lining up multiple blocks of the same color to make them disappear.
- Canine Companion: If Nia feeds a Wonder Treat to a dog, the dog will start following her wherever she goes. It will even attack her enemies if she's in danger, though it will flee if it takes too much damage.
- Cartoon Bomb: The Bombs that Nia can use have the classic spherical look, complete with a skull emblem.
- Chest Monster: A few of the game’s treasure chests are actually mimics, which will spring to life and attack you relentlessly if you try to open them.
- Dem Bones: Nia can encounter chunky skeletons that love scarfing down fish sticks.
- Edible Bludgeon: The Tamanegis carry oversized leeks which they use as clubs.
- Feed It a Bomb: Weremoles attack by emerging from the ground under Nia's feet and trying to bite her. She can instantly defeat one by dropping a bomb on the spot where it's going to surface, causing the mole to swallow the bomb and blow itself up.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Fire Plant is a potted plant which Nia can use to shoot fireballs. While these fireballs can deal significant damage to enemies, the weapon's very slow charging speed and rate of fire make it better suited for puzzle solving than active combat.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Brina's sidequest had a nasty bug. Once her uncle shows up during the boss fight with the tree stump and tells Nia to throw a wooden box at it, the game would immediately crash, booting you back to the desktop or home screen. The bug has thankfully been patched out
- Game Within a Game: There are a few locations where Nia can play an arcade game about a hungry monkey that tries to eat falling pieces of fruit. Doing sufficiently well at this game will reward Nia with a Heart Medal and some collectibles.
- Ghostly Animals: The chicken coop northwest of Koala Town is haunted by ghostly chickens. They aren't hostile, and they will grant Nia the key needed to enter their coop if she solves their puzzles.
- Groupie Brigade: The Tamanegi singer Vida has a legion of downright obsessed fans. Nia must beat these fans senseless to stop them from rushing the stage during the last part of Vida's performance.
- Heart Container: Two varieties.
- Nia can find Heart Medals as she explores the nooks and crannies of Seashell Island. She can then give these medals to M. Uscle, who will add an extra heart to Nia's life meter for every four medals she turns over.
- Whenever Nia clears a dungeon, she will be given a carton of Heart Juice which instantly increases her max life by one heart.
- Hold the Line: For the last phase of the Greenhouse dungeon's boss fight, Nia must fend off literal hordes of Vida's fans as they try to rush the stage. Every fan that gets past Nia will deplete some of her health, leading to a Game Over if too many get through.
- Huggy, Huggy Hippos: The Wetlands are full of docile pink hippos who will gladly let Nia hitch a ride across the deep water by standing on their heads.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Nia can recover health by scarfing down the contents of her refillable Ramen Bowl.
- Improbable Weapon User:
- Nia wields a hockey stick as her primary weapon. Beyond smacking enemies with it, she can also use it to send bombs and Wonder Treats sliding across the floor like pucks.
- The pirates that have taken over Igloo Heights carry pooper scoopers which they use to lob chicken eggs at Nia.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me:
- The elite pirates carry spiked riot shields which protect them from frontal attacks, and which they can use to ram Nia for heavy damage in a Dash Attack.
- The Volarians encountered in the final dungeon carry a sword and shield. While the shield is up, frontal attacks cannot hurt them, but they leave themselves open when preparing to attack.
- Ludicrous Gibs: A G-rated example. Most enemies will explode into a pile of bones and Cartoon Meat upon being slain.
- Objectshifting: The penguins living in Igloo Heights can transform into inanimate objects like toasters and waffle irons, doing so to hide from the pirates that have taken over their town.
- Oculothorax: There are batlike creatures which are basically just an eye with wings and dangling legs.
- Path Deduction Puzzle: There are a few areas where Nia must navigate invisible pathways over bottomless pits. The Fire Plant's fireballs can illuminate these paths, showing Nia where it is safe to walk.
- Plant Person: The Tamanegis are a species of sapient humanoid onions.
- Precursors: The Volarians were an ancient, technologically advanced race of Bird People who built the machine that became Seashell Island to be an ark for their people, and they created many of the strange creatures which populate the island using their mastery of genetic engineering and biotechnology. They became Abusive Precursors after Karasu rose to power, as he had them wipe out a rival civilization of technologically advanced cat people, and the ark doubles as a tool for global conquest.
- Porn Stash: The rooster-man who runs the shop in Barlu Woods won't sell you anything until you track down his missing "reading material", which is heavily implied to be a porno mag catering specifically to Bird People like himself.
- Reviving Enemy: The skeletal bats will fall apart if Nia hits them enough, but they will just pull themselves back together after a few seconds unless she destroys their remains with the Fire Plant.
- Sequential Boss: The final boss has three distinct forms which must be fought in a row.
- Shout-Out:
- The journalist and photographer who runs Seashell Island's newspaper is named Peter P..
- The giant worm boss Shai Holok is an obvious reference to the sand worms of Dune, which are called Shai Hulud in the Fremen language.
- Slide Attack: Nia can eventually learn a technique which lets her do a sliding kick while she's running.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Bran Bran Peaks is the game's obligatory snowy region. There's no Frictionless Ice to worry about, but Nia will catch a chill if she tries to move through patches of cold water without a hot water bottle to keep her warm.
- Spike Shooter: The cactus creatures can launch volleys of spikes into the air, with the spikes raining down on Nia's current position a few seconds later.
- Sprint Shoes: Nia eventually gets her hands on a pair of Super Sneakers, allowing you to run by holding down a button.
- Stealth-Based Mission: The Sawmill in the Barlu Woods is patrolled by ornery lumberjacks who will throw Nia out the instant they spot her.
- Token Heroic Orc: Most of the Tamanegis that Nia will run into as she explores the island are hostile, but a few of them are friendly and will help her out in small ways.
- Tomboyish Baseball Cap: Nia is a sporty and adventurous girl who wears a backwards baseball cap.
- Trademark Favorite Food: The leader of the pirates loves cereal, so much so that she had her crew take over the cereal factory in Igloo Heights just so she could get it straight from the source.
- Treacherous Quest Giver: Karasu, the guy who gave Nia and Avocado their quest to recover the missing gears? He's the Big Bad, and he's going to use those gears to power his doomsday weapon so he can Take Over the World.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Nia can pet every cat and dog she finds while exploring Seashell Island. If she gives a Wonder Treat to the big-eared mice that scurry around in certain rooms, the mice will thank her by dropping a heart.
- Warp Whistle: Seashell Island has an underground network of rollercoasters that act as a rapid transit system. Once Nia has unlocked a rollercoaster station by solving a Block Puzzle (which get increasingly complex the further out you get from the starting area), she can travel from it to any other unlocked station.