Zelda’s best spinoff turned out to be a blueprint for gaming’s future

The best Zelda spinoff is a reminder that bold creative risks keep a series fresh

Early on in its history, Nintendo didn’t really care what happened with its IP. That sounds impossible today, but the 1980s were a different time. Nintendo would hand Mario off to Interplay so it could put him into Checkers or let a group of musicians create a Donkey Kong musical record that invented foundational lore about the character. That’s a far cry from the Nintendo we’ve come to know in recent years, with its iron grip on its most lucrative mascots.

Nintendo has begun to loosen up in the past few years. It allowed Illumination to take creative liberties with Mario in its animated movie, partnered with Koei Tecmo to rebuild Fire Emblem in Dynasty Warriors’ image, and even gave smaller external studios like Acquire a crack at its games. Those are all big steps, but nothing matches its boldest move of the Switch era: Cadence of Hyrule, a one-off Zelda game that quietly signaled where the gaming industry was headed.

Released in 2019, just two years after the groundbreaking Breath of the Wild, Cadence of Hyrule remains a total shocker seven years later. It’s unlike any Zelda game that came before or after it, and that’s because of its unusual developer. The project was created by Brace Yourself Games, an indie studio that found success in 2015 with the hit rhythm game Crypt of the NecroDancer. In a move that still feels a bit surreal, Nintendo tapped the studio to create a version of the game set in the Zelda universe.

It seemed random at the time considering how tightly controlled Nintendo’s franchises were, but it paid off. Cadence of Hyrule functions as both a fantastic ode to top-down Zelda history and an excellent rhythm game. It’s a typical pitch for a Zelda game even if it doesn’t star Link: explore Hyrule, get items, clear dungeons. The twist is that every action you take is timed to the beat of composer Danny Baranowsky’s excellent Zelda remixes. Moving to the music turns your usual Zelda formula into a traversal puzzle game where every step counts.

At the time, it felt like a significant moment. Was Nintendo finally ready to hand the keys to its biggest franchises over to external talent who could freshen them up? That sea change didn’t exactly come. While there have been some surprising partnerships in recent years, we haven’t seen Toby Fox directing an Earthbound game or gotten to see the Pizza Tower team revive Wario Land. Cadence of Hyrule remains a one-off experiment for Nintendo today.

But, perhaps, it was just ahead of its time by a few years. In 2026, the idea behind Cadence of Hyrule is becoming much more commonplace. As I noted following PlayStation’s Feb. 12 State of Play, big publishers are starting to trust indie studios with their biggest games. The team behind Dead Cells is reviving Castlevania, small horror studio Screen Burn Interactive is making the next Silent Hill game, and WrestleQuest developer Mega Cat Studios just released a surprise 2D God of War game with Sony’s support. The movement that Cadence of Hyrule teased is here, just not where we expected it.

I hope that Nintendo is paying attention to the moment it inadvertently helped create. Cadence of Hyrule remains a high point in the Zelda series, even if it’s niche, and that was made possible by trusting a developer with a proven track record. If Brace Yourself Games could safely pull that off with something as big as Zelda, why not take some chances with some lower-stakes franchises in need of help? I bet that the developers behind Whisker Squadron: Survivor could have some fun with the dormant StarFox series, or that Fast Fusion studio Shin'en Multimedia could give F-Zero a boost.

Cadence of Hyrule is too good to only be remembered as a weird piece of Zelda trivia wheeled out for its anniversary. (Happy 40th, by the way.) It should have lit a creative spark for Nintendo in 2019 and given us some great reinterpretations of its series in the Switch era. In a moment where players are wondering how Nintendo can evolve the series past its winning Breath of the Wild formula, Cadence of Hyrule is a reminder that Zelda is at its most creatively satisfying when Nintendo is taking risks. I’m still holding out hope that we’ll see that spirit again, even if it’s just for a Zelda-themed reskin of the excellent Rift of the NecroDancer next time.