Zelda on Smartphone: Thoughts & Ideas

This year in May there were rumors about an upcoming Smartphone Zelda game. And the more I thought about the possibility, the more I grew excited about it. Unlike my Nintendo 3DS, which I mostly play at home, I use my smartphone quite often on the go, where a real mobile Zelda experience seems quite appealing by now.

Looking at both Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes, we can get some ideas of what Nintendo could and should do (differently) with a Smartphone Zelda title.

Controls and Playstyle

Unlike the smartphone titles that Nintendo has developed so far, Zelda would probably utilize a horizontal playstyle in landscape mode, where you hold your phone sideways with one hand and play with the index finger of the other hand. The classic Zelda topdown perspective is best suited for this. Imagine something like in the following mock-up:

The touch controls would be almost identical to the Nintendo DS Zelda games, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. Link follows your finger around the environment, where moving your finger along the border will scroll. You can interact with anything by tapping on it: tap an enemy to attack it, tap a treasure chest to open it or tap a sign to read it. Simple as that.

You can use items by tapping on the icon in the top right corner of the screen. Link will then stand still and the game lets you utilize the item via the touchscreen, e.g. aiming and shooting with a bow. The menu in the bottom right corner will let you switch items, view the map or your inventory. These icons may move into the opposite corner for lefties.

So, this isn't exactly new, but it has worked quite well on the Nintendo DS and can give us a proper Zelda experience on the phone. There's no need to alter or simplify the core gameplay of Zelda to make it work on a smartphone, unlike what they did with Super Mario and Fire Emblem. It even could work with a vertical layout, if that's preferred.

Anthology Game

While the core gameplay would be classic topdown Zelda empowered by familiar touch controls, this shouldn't be just one classic Zelda game, where you make one playthrough and be done with it. Of course Nintendo could release a classic Zelda title in the size of Link's Awakening or A Link Between Worlds on smart devices, where you pay once, beat the game and that's it. However, this ultimately wouldn't be very satisfying on the long run. In times of DLC it's nice to get some new content on a more regular basis. It would even fit the free-to-play concepts better, which Nintendo is trying to use on smartphones.

How would this look like? There's one central Zelda title available on mobile devices, which they could call something like The Legend of Zelda: Tales from Hyrule or The Legend of Zelda: Ever Adventures or whatever. This hub game then gives access to smaller, individual Zelda episodes, where a new one gets released every few months.

One episode would basically be a small Zelda game with a normal overworld, a small story, about four dungeons and a few items. In each episode Link could be send to a different kingdom / country to help, similar to how it's done in the Oracle games. In fact this would become what Capcom originally had envisioned on the GameBoy Color, where they wanted to release six individual Zelda games one after another with a couple months between them.

Each episode could become completely different in tone, like one game that takes entirely place in some dark and scary country, where you have to defeat its evil lord. Items would also be different from game to game, so in one game you might get the Hookshot, while the other offers you the Boomerang instead. It's all about the variety and always having something to look forward to in the near future. Maybe there is even a bigger story that looms over all the games and that gets uncovered, if you play it all.

You would get the first "game" for free and if you want to play any of the future episodes, you will have to purchase them. Some progress would be shared between the games, e.g. certain items that you can use everywhere or a global Rupee balance. This could be used to unlock things that you normally wouldn't be able to access.

Alternatively the game could feature more simple levels similar to Four Swords Adventures or Tri Force Heroes as its episodes, but with the main difference that those levels are focused on singleplayer.

Multiplayer and Rewards

The nature of such a title would even allow for multiplayer-centric episodes that support certain player counts, though they should probably keep it dynamic between one and four players to avoid the inconveniences that Tri Force Heroes had. However, whether Nintendo would want to support real-time multiplayer on a Smartphone title, is questionable at this point.

One thing they probably could keep from Tri Force Heroes, though, are the outfits, because they would make an excellent reward that gets shared over all the games, both singleplayer and multiplayer. So, while Link might lose everything else on his journeys, he will always bring his wardrobe, where you can get the typical benefits. Maybe the outfits are even split up like in Breath of the Wild, where you could chose different headpieces and maybe even boots (probably not the latter, though).

My Nintendo then could be used to unlock special outfits or to get treasures and Rupees for buying outfits, if you're too impatient to actually collect enough in the game.

With a multiplayer in place, there also should be an arena mode for battling other players. Similar to the singleplayer episodes, there could be new levels released from time to time in both the coop multiplayer and the arena.

Conclusion

This might seem like a lot at first, but the idea really is to give the Zelda fans something more byte-sized in quick succession, instead of waiting for a new game for years. We already got a taste of that with all the DLC for both Hyrule Warriors and Breath of the Wild, but the 2D Zelda style should make it a lot easier for Nintendo to continuously produce new content and keep the Zelda fans out there excited.