Ocarina of Time: Even a Kalimba Can Play Link's Ocarina

On the Nintendo Switch 2 version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, even a kalimba gets Link playing the ocarina. Players’ performances posted on social media since the November 5 launch show what range of sounds the game recognizes.

Instead of using buttons, you can enter tunes with your voice or by playing an instrument into the console’s built-in microphone. The game has a voice setting and an instrument setting, and if a tune isn’t recognized, you switch between them. It’s a single-player title for Switch 2 only.

According to a report rounding up player posts, the wind instruments that work aren’t limited to a real ocarina. Recorders, flutes and empty bottles all worked for entering tunes, and whistling was recognized too. Among instruments you strum or pluck, the game has picked up an acoustic guitar, a ukulele-like instrument, a harp, a kalimba and the Otamatone, an electronic instrument. One post shows a bass plugged in through a line input. It even reacts to songs that aren’t in the game: posts show someone singing “Jingle Bells”, an entirely different song, and the game still registering it as some kind of tone.

The idea came from series producer Eiji Aonuma. In Nintendo’s Ask the Developer interview series, director HokWai Ng explains how it started. About a year ago, Aonuma came over and suggested that since Switch 2 has a built-in microphone, voice recognition should be possible, Ng says.

Aonuma pictured a player humming a tune learned in the game and Link responding by playing it. Some people might even be able to play a real ocarina, he added, so it would be fun if real instruments could be used for input too. Aonuma himself looks back on it as a sudden idea and a pretty tall order.

The development team struggled to tell sounds apart and with tuning, according to co-producer Hidemaro Fujibayashi. The aim, he says, was to add a slightly offbeat kind of fun to the game. Aonuma also adds that entering tunes by voice doesn’t make it any easier to progress through the game.

Since you can switch settings when a tune doesn’t register, finding out which of your own instruments the game will accept could become a game of its own.

Language: English
As of October 14, 2026