After dozens of hours climbing around, raiding dungeons, and fighting Ganon, your time in The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom will, eventually, come to an end. But don’t fret, as you stare at your blank Switch screen, feeling like a piece of your soul is missing. There are loads of games you can go to for your next adventure.
Whether it’s a sword-swinging action game, something that meets Tears of the Kingdom’s scale, or just something with similar puzzles, there’s bound to be something to get stuck into on our list of games to play next.
10 Lil’ Gator Game
Strip away Master Swords, Gerudos, and Zora and, at its core, Tears of the Kingdom is a sandbox to play in. A huge open world to go off the beaten track, explore, and just play around. In that regard, Lil’ Gator Game is easily the closest thing you’ll ever play to it.
Not only is the hero a little green ball of light, Lil’ Gator Game has you explore a wild landscape and simply play with the tools you acquire. Float above the clouds with a ball of chewing gum, throw shurikens at cardboard enemies, and even surf down hills on your pot lid shield – all without the weapon degradation of Zelda.
Optimistic and unremittingly heartwarming, Lil’ Gator Game might not have the grandiose scale of Tears of the Kingdom, but it’s still going to scratch that itch of just mucking about for a few hours.
9 Supraland
Putting you in the plasticine shoes of a toy in a child’s sandbox, Supraland couldn’t be thematically further from Tears of the Kingdom. However, if you want more of Tears’ dungeons, maybe the puzzles on offer here will satiate you.
Supraland offers you a big, open-ended map to explore, chock full of equipment, enemies to defeat, and clever puzzles to solve. It also relies heavily on physics, with mechanics like magnetism playing a similarly big role. Much like Tears of the Kingdom, no matter how carefully you pick through the world, you’ll likely always find another nook or cranny to explore.
Though it does channel more elements of Metroidvania games – such as expanding paths and a focus on unlocking upgrades – Supraland is still an incredible puzzling adventure that offers enough freedom to scratch that Zelda itch.
8 Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact likely wouldn’t exist without Tears of the Kingdom’s predecessor, Breath of the Wild. It has so much Zelda in its DNA, like the sprawling worlds, freeform climbing, and elemental abilities that interact with the world in creative ways. However, it also does enough to set it apart from Link and Hyrule, and stand proud as one of the best free-to-play games at the moment.
The big draw of Genshin Impact is, in true Gatcha fashion, its huge playable roster. Each has its own playstyles and synergies, and lots of your time will be spent fine-tuning your team of four to make sure their elemental abilities match up for maximum benefit.
The sheer amount of stuff on offer in Genshin is staggering. There are hundreds of hours of story content, repeatable daily missions, events, and a world so big you could spend days just running about and not even scratch the surface. And for the wonderful cost of ‘free’, there’s nothing stopping you from getting stuck into the world of Teyvat straight away.
7 Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Legends: Arceus did to Pokemon what Breath of the Wild, and later Tears of the Kingdom, did to Zelda. Taking the series from a more linear and enclosed experience into huge, systems-driven open worlds managed to make Legends: Arceus one of the most interesting Pokemon games ever released.
Set hundreds of years ago in the Hisui region, Arceus takes the normal monster-catching and battling you know and turns it into an open-ended stealth, survival adventure. There’s no wading through tall grass here – you encounter Pokemon in the open world, and can catch and battle them all from the same perspective.
You can even open up new areas to explore as you recruit more Pokemon, such as climbing cliffs on a Sneasler’s back, or soaring through the air with a Braviary. If you liked exploring Hyrule, Hisui’s open plains and misty, mountainous peaks is going to offer more of the same.
6 Elden Ring
Elden Ring offers a very different vibe from Tears of the Kingdom. Gone is the playful creativity of melding together items, and instead you have a dark, brutal, and challenging slog across The Lands Between.
Like most FromSoft games, Elden Ring is rock-hard, with complex enemy encounters and deadly traps all over the place. However, Elden Ring takes FromSoftware’s usual Dark Souls style and spreads it across a beautiful open world, full of things to discover (and then promptly be killed by).
More than just being a swords-and-sorcery-style open world, Elden Ring also shares a lot of the thematic elements of Tears of the Kingdom. Both let go of your hand let you freely explore their desolate, broken worlds, and allow you to tackle most challenges in whatever way you like. While Elden Ring is obviously a darker, grittier game, this is another journey you can spend hundreds of hours on.
5 Immortals Fenyx Rising
Another game that likely wouldn’t even exist without Zelda is Ubisoft’s Immortals Fenyx Rising. This awkwardly-punctuated title takes the open-ended exploration and dungeon-based puzzle-solving of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and transposes it into a huge world inspired by Greek mythology.
Immortals hits just about every beat of Zelda. Like finding new equipment and abilities? Immortals has it. Like plunging into dungeons and solving puzzles? Immortals has that too. Want some challenging bosses to throw your new toys at? By Zeus, Immortals has that.
With witty writing, a gorgeous art style, and an intriguing take on the famous Greek pantheon, Immortals Fenyx Rising manages to differentiate itself from Zelda just enough to feel fresh, while still giving you everything you might want coming off of Tears of the Kingdom.
4 Cadence Of Hyrule
So far, this list has had a lot of games that evoke the exploration and scale of the Zelda series, and not a whole lot of just-more-Zelda. If you want Bokoglins, Master Swords, and, most importantly, the sweet tunes of the series, Cadence of Hyrule should be your next stop.
A crossover between The Legend of Zelda and the sublime Crypt of the Necrodancer, Cadence of Hyrule follows Necrodancer’s Cadence, as she uncovers iconic locations like Hyrule Castle and Kakariko Village.
The gimmick here is that, like Necrodancer, every enemy moves and attacks to the beat of the music.By finding weapons and tools, and learning the patterns of your enemies, you’ll need to complete dungeons and collect Sheikah stones if you ever want Cadence to get home.
Cadence of Hyrule manages to simultaneously be a celebration of everything Zelda, while also being like nothing the series has done before. If you want Zelda’s vibes, characters, and its banging music, but fancy a break from open-world adventuring, check out Cadence of Hyrule.
3 Gravity Rush And Gravity Rush 2
Tears of the Kingdom is an incredibly vertical game. As you drop through the sky, descend into dungeons, and climb up mountains, you’ll find Hyrule feels as tall as it is wide. If you’re wanting more of those dizzying heights and epic plunges, why not look to one of PlayStation’s most underrated series?
Gravity Rush follows Kat, who has the ability to manipulate gravity. By changing which direction she falls, she can climb up through towering cities and cavernous expanses, or get the drop on enemies from any angle. Both Gravity Rush and Gravity Rush 2 follow this basic idea, with 2 having larger environments, more physics objects to throw around, and an expanded cast of characters to meet.
While the series is more of a straight action game than a Zelda romp, the aesthetics, world design, and, of course, soaring through the air across a huge open world, all make this series a sleeper hit you’ll definitely want to check out.
2 Tunic
Tunic borrows more from the older Zelds games than Tears of the Kingdom, eschewing the third-person open world for a top-down adventure. However, it still has the many secrets and upgrades that made Tears of the Kingdom so special.
The hook of Tunic is its language. Most signs, instructions, and even the game’s manual are in a language crafted for the game, and part of the appeal is uncovering new letters, words, and phrases as you feel your way through the world. It adds to the sense of mystery and discovery – as you learn about the world, your knowledge of the language will improve too.
If you want something adorable, mysterious, and slightly more cerebral than Tears of the Kingdom, but with the same sense of adventure and wonder, then it might be worth spending time with this cute little fox.
1 Shadow Of The Colossus
If you like the desolate, lonely world of Tears of the Kingdom, Shadow of the Colossus is a classic well worth discovering for yourself. Set in dying lands free of human interference, your task is to hunt down and kill sixteen gigantic colossi to bring your loved one back to life.
While it’s framed like an action game, each colossus is its own puzzle. Working out how to scale these living mountain and get to their weak spots is 75 percent of the battle, and while it certainly is a spectacle, no game has managed to make the melancholy, almost guild-ridden feeling you get on taking down these beautiful, towering beasts.
In a lot of ways, Shadow of the Colossus is to Tears of the Kingdom what Breath of the Wild was to lots of games on this list. We wouldn’t have the rich, sparse world, somber tone, or hulking enemies we have today if it wasn’t for Colossus. If you’ve not played it already, this is a huge hole in your gaming history you need to fill, and quickly.