IT’S THE ZELDA MAKER EVERYONE HAS BEEN ASKING FOR

Remember when the success of Super Mario Maker had people asking for Nintendo to make the equivalent “maker” for many of their beloved series. The closest we ever got was a custom dungeon addition in the remake of Link’s Awakening and that didn’t seem to satisfy audiences so leave it to an independent developer to fill the void. Super Dungeon Maker is very much a “Zelda Maker” without the franchise attached, but before anyone gets too excited, I should state that this game is sort of early access as stated on the startup screen.

For the most part this only shows in its somewhat lacking content. There are only a few items that the playable character Fink (who is a chicken) can pick up and use which cover some Zelda mainstays (shield, flippers, hookshot, and bombs), limited theming for dungeons, and a small selection of enemies and bosses. It’s certainly enough to be creative and learn the systems but it does give all dungeons a sense of sameness which outside of maybe the first two Zelda games has never really been the case.

PLATFORMS: PC, SWITCH
MSRP: $19.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $19.99

Interface wise everything works really well. The Switch version lacks touch screen controls and instead uses buttons to quickly access different options while building dungeons and allows a cursor to be moved via the analog stick. It’s really intuitive. What maybe isn’t is some of the quirks around building which brings me to sort of a main point I think people didn’t think about back when Mario Maker came out and that’s that Mario levels are sort of simplistic. Sure, they can be more complex but generally the stages lack much logic in the sense that certain events have to occur when certain things are achieved or performed. Super Dungeon Maker does most of this for you and makes it extremely simple, but it still requires a lot more work than a Mario level. Multiple rooms must be connected, they need to be populated with objects, puzzles need to be designed, and the design of the actual dungeon needs to be thought out. That’s a lot more than a side scrolling level, so when I try to make a chest with flippers in it be rewarded to the player after beating all the enemies it can’t be done if the chest is already placed. Instead, the chest has to be moved, a special event marker needs to be put down, and then the chest placed over top of it. In theory it should just work but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes and this is a quirk of a dense system trying to do the heavy lifting for the player. It’s only disruptive because designing a dungeon is way more difficult than it looks.

I also couldn’t select rooms to be dark, only floors. I wish I could select rooms to apply certain effects. Maybe this will change, maybe this won’t. Luckily, they are open to feedback as stated in the startup.

I know that may have been a lot of emotions but it’s a well-made program that just shows how much thought is put into dungeon design.

Playing dungeons works just like one would expect. Fink controls great, is animated wonderfully (and that goes for all the artwork), and it feels like Zelda… except for the shield. The shield currently is my only issue while playing dungeons. Fink doesn’t lock into a strafe when using the shield which makes closing the gap with enemies who used ranged attacks extremely difficult. Outside of that I would think I was playing an official Zelda game. It is odd however to start another dungeon and lack all equipment because part of Zelda has always been collecting an arsenal of items and therefore skills and this is the other part of why a Zelda Maker may not have been something Nintendo wanted to do. It’s a bit odd just going from dungeon to dungeon and resetting every time. I think Mario made a bit more sense, but again this comes from the external mindset of how Zelda works and not what Super Dungeon Maker is. I need to bring it up though because if people go in expecting anything more than straight Zelda-like dungeons they are going to be disappointed.

Playing other people’s dungeons is made quick and easy but finding them is not. There really needs to be a better system to search because the top dungeons as of writing this have a lot of meme-based dungeons which is sort of annoying. I would love to play the dungeon made by fellow site writer Ryan but there’s no simple way of doing this, unlike the level codes from Super Mario Maker. Something like that needs to be implemented so people can share dungeons via Twitter and the like.

Overall, this is a great program as long as nothing else is expected other than dungeon creation and playing. It’s pretty easy to use and there’s definitely an audience that is going to make crazy dungeons with it, but that audience isn’t me. If they implement a dungeon code system, I can see myself being a player rather than a contributor, but anyone looking to make Zelda dungeons (and only dungeons) this is exactly what you are looking for.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.