Last updated on December 14th, 2025 at 03:51 am
Aruna's Adventure – Roleplaying Game Review
Aruna's Adventure is a Roleplaying/Entertainment/Adventure game from James Swiney, first launched in 22nd September 2020.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 82+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Aruna's Adventure Stand Out
Aruna’s Adventure takes you on a nostalgic trip back to the early '90s action adventure games. It has a vibrant 8 bit pixel art style and an emphasis on action combat combined with exploration.
The player takes control of the blue haired heroine Aruna, who along with her guiding fairy is trying to stop the Dark Lord from infesting the lands with monsters.
Aruna explores the multiple landscapes of the world fighting monsters, finding secrets, entering dungeons and fighting bosses.
Main Game Features :
- Engaging fun combat: Aruna can dash, strike and use special weapon attacks.
- Over 400 handcrafted screens that stitch together into 3 Large overworld areas and 6 sprawling dungeons.
- Unique and challenging boss fights.
- Get coins from enemies and secret chests to buy new gear in the shops throughout the world.
- A classic retro story with wizards, fairies and a dark lord.
It may be retro style but we have modern conveniences :
- Autosaving, never lose any progress if you have to shut down quickly (however there is a penalty for death of course).
- Cloud syncing for save games.
- Controller support for both gameplay and menus.
- Game Center achievements.
- 120fps on supported devices.
This Roleplaying game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Aruna's Adventure is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 13th September 2023
Recent improvements include:
Updated to support the latest devices.
Download & Availability
Aruna's Adventure is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Aruna's Adventure on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We downloaded this game for a flight so that we wouldnt get bored. We didnt realize how long we would be playing! We didnt find any glitches in our 3 hours that we had played on the flight, and it was pretty smooth gameplay. We would very much recommend if you enjoy adventure games like Zelda.
We highly recommend this game with a retro feel. The best part is the exploration. For us the bosses are just the right amount difficult: some put up a really good fight but none got frustrating. There are glitches, but the game is very playable, and is well worth our time and money.
Super fun game, just what we were looking for, but the controls are difficult to use. Movement is up down left and right. But dragging your finger or thumb around doesnt work, you basically have to constantly lift your thumb up and move it. Its so hard to change direction. And the other controls for your weapon and up to three other items are small and close together. You often cant switch between them without looking, and our thumb loses the sense of position so we constantly have to reset our hand. We trigger the wrong item. We trigger no item. Super annoying, especially when winning the game depends on being able to use these items in combination. It takes twice as long to get through a challenge because you cant successfully use the controls. We hope this developer fixes it, and we hope they make more games! We will buy them.
Perfect graphics for our taste and though we play jrpg mostly this is a retro rpg like Zelda that we love to play.
Thanks for listening to the fans :)! This game now fully runs on keyboard, controller, and touch and the overall challenge/fun you can have is by and large one of the best! Keep up the good work :) Can we see some DLCs? Id love to contribute more to the developers ^^ Kind regards, Everyday Guy.
Ive seen reviews that refer to lack of story and rough controls, but it provided hours of fun for $5(really, what else can you do thats fun for hours for little more than the price of a coffee). Playing on a phone, we personally dont want to read small text and just want to hack and slash our way to victory. Controls can be tricky, but in our opinion it was just enough to add to the difficulty of an otherwise easy game without any annoyance. We definitely recommend this game if you like old school Zelda type games(pared down hack & slash game with armor/weapon upgrades and grid maps but minimal questing) and you want to kill 2-4 hours. We thoroughly enjoyed it and would certainly buy a sequel. No stress, just fun…Nicely done.
We love this game but we cant get past the 3rd tome. We got all of the gems but somewhere along the line the green gem disappeared. We went back to all of the chests on the level but they were all open.
Yes, the controls are as bad as everyone says. Its a D pad. And its too big. There are no vibrations to tell where you on the D pad. Starting out – youll literally have to look down to see where your thumb is before you get it down. Im a good ways in and we still take damage because Aruna wont move out of the way in time. Not gonna lie, we were regretting buying this game within about 3 minutes of starting. But that feeling passed fairly quickly. But like everyone else has said – if you like the old school Zeldas – youll like this. Its a very condensed, bite-sized, Zelda game. Im very conflicted on what to rate this. If we could, we think Id probably rate it 3.5 stars.
Game is really great but the crashes are not fun at all. 4 crashes in a row within the first hour played. Its great your game is saved right when you heal your self. The gamer is good just not the crashes.
This game was fun while we could play it. Now the game crashes as soon as we hit the saved game to load. If this is fixed we would definitely give it 4-5 stars.
We love the game so far, been playing an hour and already at the second to third stage. The only issue we have is when you dash, sometimes it will shoot you into a river and you get stuck trying to dash back to shore somehow. Ive even been smacked by a grey frog and sent into the river by the waterfall/cross to the winter world. Its irritating to say the least. Other then that, you all made a nice tributary to Zelda.
This games remind us of the original Zelda. Controls needs updating. Please allow to resize of the controller. Playing on a 12 IPad Pro makes it nearly impossible.
Please work on the controls. They need help! Let the player have the option of enlarging the buttons.
Very simple, very easy. We played the whole game, but wasnt very satisfied.
Needs a serious coat of polish. The controls are occasionally unresponsive, we frequently get stuck in walls or rivers or teleport back Into rooms as we dash around. And though we understand the boomerang is kinda OP it's still pretty dumb as a one time use item especially since several enemies are out of reach with no way to get their item drops. Shops will occasionally empty their items after we buy one thing and we're unable to purchase the other gear. "Towns" consist of 2 buildings. One of which can't be entered and the other has the same npc Sprite with nothing else. It's just a bland environment. "Secrets" are all the same, clear the screen of enemies and get stairs or a door to a 10g chest. Eventually you'll have a significant more amount of money than is necessary. So we'd recommend just skipping most fights since golf and health used immediately are the oy rewards. If this game was baked a bit more and had some attention to detail we would find it really charming. But the generic story, bland environment , terrible controls, and lack of items leave a lot to be desired.
Really nice and excellent game, needs just a little bit more to make it awesome. Old school.
Let us start off by saying that this is a fantastic game. Virtually everything one would want in an old school adventure. The ONLY reason we gave it 4 instead of 5 stars is the controls. We appreciate the controller support, but while out and about that is not practical. Maybe a floating d-pad, analog stick? Maybe its just us having trouble adjusting the the controls, but some options would be much appreciated.
This is a fun retro 8-bit Zelda-esque type game. With that said, the controls need a ton of work. Because the joystick controls arent dynamic, our finger slides off of them constantly. They dont work for a touch interface. Most of our deaths have been from this issue.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.1
- Size: 22.38 MB
- iOS: 13.4 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: [James Swiney]()
Last updated: 13th September 2023 | Genre: Roleplaying, Entertainment | Developer: James Swiney