Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas

Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas is an action-adventure video game for iOS devices, published in November 2013 by the Finnish game studio Cornfox & Brothers. It focuses on a boy protagonist's quest to find his lost father and defeat the sea monster Oceanhorn.

The gameplay and graphic design of Oceanhorn closely follows that of the Legend of Zelda video games, notably The Wind Waker and A Link to the Past. Players explore dungeons, fight monsters with various weapons, and throw pots and cut bushes to find hidden coins or hearts. The music of Oceanhorn was composed by Nobuo Uematsu and Kenji Ito.

The initial critical reception of Oceanhorn was positive. Cnet commented that "if The Legend of Zelda were to come to mobile, (...) we don't think it could do a better job" than Oceanhorn, and Touch Arcade praised the "excellent music, occasional voice-acting, and vibrant, lush 3D graphics", concluding that the game "might be a flawed, blatant rip-off of Zelda, but it’s worth playing".

Plot

A thousand years ago, the Kingdom of Arcadia experienced an 'Age of Enlightenment' in which it made a number of scientific and technological breakthroughs. Three automatons were created to act as defenders of Arcadia, known as 'Living Fortresses'. However, a dark wizard called Mesmeroth invaded Arcadia with an army of ogres and goblins (referred to as 'Direfolk'), and used his powers to summon a mass of 'Triloth' - dark energy left over from the creation of the world - from deep beneath the ground. Mesmeroth used Triloth to corrupt the Living Fortresses, and sunk most of Arcadia deep into the sea. This event became known as the 'Catastrophe'.

In order to set himself up as the new god of Arcadia, Mesmeroth and his followers then acted to isolate the three 'Sacred Emblems' - which acted as vessels through which the gods could oversee the evolution of Arcadia - from the rest of the world. He sealed away the Emblem of Earth within its own shrine by planting an evil parasite inside. He cursed the palace that held the Emblem of Ocean, causing the entire structure to freeze over. Lastly, he sought out the Emblem of the Sun, but was unable to seal it away because the island on which it resided was protected by the Grand Core, an intelligent network constructed during the Age of Enlightenment to provide power to all of Arcadia. Unwilling to let his plan falter, Mesmeroth used Triloth to suspend the entire island in the sky, cutting off its contact with the rest of the world. He then ruled tyrannically over Arcadia until his death.

In the present, the player character (referred to only as 'the Kid') sleeps in his bed as his father watches over him, preparing to set out into the night. Writing a note to explain his disappearance, the Kid's father states that he is leaving to confront Oceanhorn, one of the three ancient Living Fortresses, who he is bound to by his blood, and that he will not be returning. He leaves the Kid in the care of the local Hermit, but warns that someday Oceanhorn may come for the Kid too, as he too is bound to the creature.

The Kid awakens the following morning to discover that his father is gone, and has left him with only a sword, a shield, a small boat, and an old necklace that belonged to the Kid's dead mother. Determined to find his father, the Kid is prepared for his quest by the Hermit, who tells him that the Sacred Emblems may be his only hope of finding a lead. He points the Kid towards Tikarel, an island town.

At Tikarel, the Kid learns of the locations of the three Sacred Emblems: the Withered Lands to the south, Gillfolk's Drop to the west, and the inaccessible Sky Island. The Kid travels first to the Withered Lands, previously a settlement called 'Pirta' that was populated by an avian race, the Owrus, who are now almost entirely extinct. Finding that the area is now ruled by Direfolk, the Kid releases an Owru prisoner from a goblin camp, who reveals that the Emblem of Earth is actually on a separate island called the Great Forest, which had been a part of Pirta before the Catastrophe. The Kid travels to the Great Forest and enters the shrine, in which the parasite, 'Turmos', has become completely overgrown. However, the Kid manages to slay Turmos and retrieves the Emblem of Earth.

Before seeking out the second Sacred Emblem, the Kid returns to Tikarel for supplies, but encounters a mysterious figure dressed in a black cloak atop a tall hill on the island. The figure responds aggressively to the Kid's approach, but is defeated in the ensuing duel. Before fleeing, the figure reveals that he is one of many apostles of Mesmeroth, assigned the task of ensuring that the three Sacred Emblems are kept apart so that Arcadia can never begin rebuilding itself, and hints that Mesmeroth may still be alive.

The Kid travels to Gillfolk's Drop, where the aquatic Gillfolk guide him to the frozen palace. Using a magical spell recovered from a nearby island, the Kid is able to melt the ice throughout the palace and reach the Sacred Emblem. After being forced to battle the reanimated corpse of an ancient Gillfolk monarch, King Angler, the Kid retrieves the Emblem of Ocean. He also learns that the Coral Sabre - a sword used by an Owru hero to slay one of the other Living Fortresses long ago - is located on the nearby Riptide Reef, and may be his only hope for defeating Oceanhorn when the time comes. The Kid retrieves the Coral Sabre from the body of the dead beast before returning to the Hermit, who claims to have found a way for the Kid to reach Sky Island.

The Hermit attaches a hot air balloon to the Kid's boat and manages to fly him to Sky Island, but the boat crashes into the island's surface. The Kid finds that a small community is still living on the floating island, but they explain to him that the Emblem of the Sun is lost; the community had developed a system in which they would entrust the Emblem to a different maiden every year, to act as the voice of the god who saw through the Emblem. However, a villager who had helped to maintain the Grand Core had approached the rest of the community one day and claimed that the Core had told him of a way to return Sky Island to the ground below, but that it needed the Emblem in order to complete the task. Blinded by the hope of reunion with the rest of Arcadia, the villagers tried to take the Emblem from the maiden it had been entrusted to, who believed that the Grand Core's promise was a trap. In order to protect the Emblem, she hurled herself from the edge of the island, disappearing into Arcadia below.

The Kid travels to the Grand Core deep inside the island, where he discovers that the voice that had demanded the Emblem was not the Core itself, but the spirit of Mesmeroth, who had found a way to live on after his death by binding his soul to a machine; the 'Grand Core' powering Sky Island had been Mesmeroth all along, using his power to keep the island afloat. The Kid is able to purge Mesmeroth's spirit from the Core, allowing the island to gently fall back into the ocean below. Suddenly, the necklace belonging to the Kid's mother begins to glow, and transforms into the long-lost Emblem of the Sun - revealing that the maiden who had leapt from the island was, in fact, the Kid's mother, who had survived and gone on to meet the Kid's father. Overwhelmed by gratitude, the villagers repair the Kid's boat for him, and note that they saw Mesmeroth's spirit flying west towards the ruins of the White City - the capital of Arcadia prior to the Catastrophe.

The Kid pursues Mesmeroth to the White City, where he finds the wizard attempting to bind himself to the last intelligent machine in Arcadia: Oceanhorn. The Kid's father lies defeated on the floor, and explains that the Living Fortresses had been piloted by Arcadian knights before they were corrupted by Triloth. Driven insane by the dark energy, the three beasts had spent the next thousand years desperately trying to seek out an ideal pilot to control them, with the Kid and his father being descendants of the knight who used to control Oceanhorn before the Catastrophe. Though the Kid's father had once attempted to control Oceanhorn using a magical flute that had belonged to the ancient knight, the beast had killed the Kid's mother in its insanity, and so he realised that it had to be destroyed rather than controlled, and had left to confront it on his own in order to protect his son.

The Kid battles Oceanhorn with the Coral Sabre and is able to damage it enough to purge Mesmeroth's spirit; he then uses his father's flute to briefly take control of the beast himself and force it to throw itself over the edge of a cliff, destroying it. With Oceanhorn gone, Mesmeroth no longer has anything to bind to, and fades away. The Kid's father approaches him, having survived his long battle with Oceanhorn, and congratulates his son on his efforts, expressing relief that the 'curse' that had haunted their bloodline for a thousand years was finally over. The two then return home with the intention of visiting the Kid's mother's grave.

External links

• Oceanhorn developer blog
• Oceanhorn on the U.S. iTunes Store