Stardew Valley publisher Chucklefish and indie developer Pixpil recently eleased a brand-new action RPG inspired by the Zelda-series, called Eastward. The game was first revealed in April of 2018, and after a long wait, an extended trailer of Eastward was shown during Nintendo's Indie World Showcase stream last month. Eastward was released a few days ago, to much fan and critical acclaim, currently holding a Metascore of 84% due to its incredibly charming pixel art and music.
Eastward offers an experience similar to the Zelda franchise, but it also pays homage to classic RPGs as well. This involves a top-down 2D adventure that has the player crawling through dungeons and completing quests in order to push Eastward's extensive narrative further. One player discovered a particular Easter Egg that shows how much love this game was giving to the RPG genre, with it being a complete shout-out to Square's Dragon Quest franchise.
Discovered by Twitter user Stealth40k, this Easter Egg comes in the form of a playable mini game that can be played on an in-game console with a video game cartridge item. The art on the cartridge item itself having its the protagonist bear a similar resemblance to the hero of Dragon Quest 3, Erdrick. The gameplay of the mini-game is also a clear shout-out to Square's franchise, being a turn-based JRPG with commands that the player can select, which includes either attacking, using items, skills, or defending.
The shout-out is further cemented with the in-game cartridge being named "Earthborn," which is both a reference to Earthbound. It's then further tied to its Dragon Quest inspiration as the name "Erdrick" can mean "dwelling Earth" too. Fellow fans of the game were impressed at this in-depth minigame, with some commenting that they were now looking forward to finding the shout-out in Eastward.
As seen in this post, there's already something to love about Eastward, from its features to the art, to the amount of respect it pays towards the games that came before it and helped pave its way. This is also accentuated by how much the game offers to the player, such as recipes, treasure chests, and plenty of NPCs to talk to. There might be more playable mini games like this available in the game to find as well.
Eastward is available now for PC and Switch.