Prodigal

Prodigal is a top-down adventure RPG by 8th Step Studios with strong 16-bit Zelda lineage — overworld exploration, dungeon clears, item-driven puzzle solving, and the small-town narrative loop the genre carries. You return to your childhood home of Vann's Point as a Prodigal and find both old friends and new dangers waiting.

The combat layer runs through caves, castles, and crypts across the kingdom of Lyrian, with a dozen-plus dungeons, 20+ bosses, and extensive post-game content totalling 24+ hours of play. Combat options expand through items, magical artifacts, and unlockable difficulty modifiers (Chaos, Altars, Curses) that let you increase the challenge in exchange for better rewards.

The RPG layer is parallel: side quests build relationships with the town's residents, and ten pursuable romances let you forge deeper connections across long arcs of play. Some quests are nostalgic small-town slice of life; others uncover fragments of long-forgotten knowledge and prophecies that recontextualise the broader story.

The soundtrack is a hybrid chiptune/organic mix — the kind that wants to feel like it belongs on an SNES cartridge but with modern production. Small team, long tail, the sort of game its fans tend to recommend by sending screenshots.