Transform Link into a baby elephant, remove Princess Zelda, swap Ganon for a power hungry queen, and add a heaping dose of cuteness. The result: the indie adventure game Yono and the Celestial Elephants. Created over a two year period by one Swedish developer, Niklas Hallin, Yono was overshadowed in October 2017 by the release of Super Mario Odyssey. Although not as polished as other indies from multi-person studios, the adventure-puzzler provides a few tricky puzzles, an abundance of elephant-based lore, and enough adorable characters to give you a heart attack.

You play as Yono, a baby elephant who crash lands on Earth near the village of Windhill. He meets a young girl, Sundara, who’s shocked to see an elephant, as they are a sort of mythical being in her land. She explains the state of the kingdom: the robotic Mekani’s desire for freedom, the crumbling of the undead Bonewights’ garden, and the human Queen’s thirst for control. Yono, the sweet little thing, has just enough optimism and naïveté to accept Sundara’s plea for help.

The game is structured much like The Legend of Zelda. You go on quests within each town, collect health tokens to increase your health, battle enemies in between destinations, and solve puzzles in dungeons. Unlike many Zelda games however, Yono has a lighter, childish atmosphere. Two of its strengths are the adorable art style and Yono’s sweet interactions with other characters. He’s the first elephant to be seen in many decades, and his presence gives hope to the kingdom’s citizens.

While the story is intriguing enough, the controls and mechanics lack finesse. Combat is limited to repeatedly head butting enemies, and puzzles are solved by either pushing blocks or using Yono’s trunk to fill water basins, light torches, or shoot balloons with peanuts. The environment is designed on a grid, based on Yono’s uniform body. However, this close fit means it’s easy to accidentally exit a room when pushing a box near a door or to fall off a platform when turning a corner.

Dialogue can be a bit wordy at times, and there’s no way to speed up the appearance of text on screen, but you do learn quite a lot about the lore surrounding elephants. Unfortunately, the sound effects also lack polish. Some of the speech noises Sundara makes are a little grating, and the sound quality isn’t quite as crisp as you’d hope.

On the other hand, the soundtrack is very calming. Despite the kinks in the mechanics, Yono is relaxing and rewarding. Children may like it better than some adults, but it’s not necessarily designed for kids, which is clear by the trickiness of some of the puzzles. Cute and engaging, Yono and the Celestial Elephants is your best chance at turning Link into a baby elephant. You can even dress Yono up in the iconic hero’s traditional green cap and tunic.

Overall, I’d recommend it! 💛💛💛💛🤍