When Nintendo first released their level-building game Super Mario Maker, many fans hoped for a similar set of tools based on The Legend Of Zelda series. The Big N haven’t gotten around to it yet, but indie developers Rokaplay and Firechick have beaten them to the punch with Super Dungeon Maker, which just released out of early access. It’s what the name implies: a game where you can build your own classic Zelda-like dungeons, share them online, and then play through other people’s whacky creations.
With a top-down perspective and detailed pixel art, Super Dungeon Maker is definitely riffing on the classic top-down style of Zelda games in the series. Your chicken hero is even called Fink rather than Link, although I doubt Fink inherited the cucco flock’s aggressive habits.
Those inspirations run deeper than just old-school aesthetics. The creation tools in Super Dungeon Maker lets you customise dungeon layouts, but you then need to drag and drop all of the decorations (choppable grass), baddies (pitchforked piranha plants), and secrets (treasure chests and traps). The experience of conquering a Hyrulean-adjacent dungeon would be incomplete without the puzzles, though, and that’s here in full force too. A “channel mechanic” allows for some light programming, which will no doubt add some variety to the various keys and levers hiding about, and you also use it to change enemy behaviour, too.
For the less creative types, Super Dungeon Maker will hopefully be an endless bucket of fun community-made stuff. I’m most looking forward to the kind of dungeons that force you to connect the dots between a random pot on one side of the dungeon, with a locked door on the other, and all that jazz. I bet you that diligent map makers will also take all of 30 seconds before they start recreating actual old Zelda maps with this game, too.
Future updates to Super Dungeon Maker will bring new dungeon themes, new skins, and pets (one of the chickens is lovingly dressed in Link’s green tunic.) The team’s Steam blog also compiles a list of community-requested features that could be added to Super Dungeon Maker over time, including elevated floors, the ability to teleport, and a bow and arrow weapon. Shooting a switch from the other side of a chasm is a quintessential Zelda puzzle, so hopefully all these features make it in.
Super Dungeon Maker is available on PC via Steam for £16.75/€20/$20, and there’s currently a 20% off introductory offer. Go make some stuff for us to play.
Kaan Serin
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