Link's Awakening Remake: Chamber Dungeons Announced

Of course the remake to Link's Awakening was getting something new, where at E3 2019 Nintendo announced the "Chamber Dungeons" as a major addition to the game.

Here Dampé returns once more, where instead of digging up graves he arranges underground dungeons for you. By beating dungeons during the game, you unlock more chambers that you can use to solve the different panels, where you have to fit in the chambers into the grid.

When we discussed potential follow-ups to the new Link's Awakening, a "Zelda Maker" was amongst those ideas, where it's nice to see that Nintendo is already experimenting with this in the remake! Of course this isn't a fully fledged dungeon maker, but it goes in this direction, where Nintendo simply might want to test the interest here.

Dungeon making is also presented here as a puzzle in itself, because the rooms have to fit each other. It actually feels similar to the Sky Keep dungeon in Skyward Sword, where instead of sliding the rooms around you'll have to place them in this puzzle. And this seems to work really well.

And as a new feature this is super exciting. I know the original game like the back of my hand. I've played it so often, I can actually replay all the dungeons from my memory alone. But re-arranging the rooms of the dungeons turns it all into a very different experience, where I know the rooms, but there is something else to find on the other side of the doors every time...

However, the Chamber Dungeons only seem to work with the small square rooms of the original dungeons. The big center area of the Tail Cave and the Key Cavern are not available for example. Those do actually scroll like we've predicted, as seen in this video by GameSpot, but they most likely won't work for the Chamber Dungeons.

Some rooms even have been modified to have walls with doors on their side, so they can be used as chambers. One example would be the narrow walkway with the flying heart that leads to the Roc's Feather in the west part of the Tail Cave. In the remake this is all one big scrolling room, instead of three. For the Chamber Dungeons, however, they've added doors to the walkway on each end, where it now has screen to screen scrolling like in the original.

There are also some additional generic rooms with blade traps, which couldn't be found in the original game, probably to compensate for missing pieces.

This might even be a big reason for bringing back the Color Dungeon... Why? Well, this dungeon was exclusively made out of such "chambers" and therefore offers many different rooms to use here.

Anyway, the Challenges themselves could lead to some interesting scenarios. With this mode you could potentially even create your own Boss Gauntlet, where maybe this is even one of the Challenges, where you're restricted to using boss and mini boss chambers only.

It's a really clever concept that Nintendo is introducing here to the series and basically even removes the need for including new dungeons and things like a Boss Rush to the game, because it can be all done via Chamber Dungeons.

Give the Zelda fans a new dungeon and they will be entertained for a little while. Give the Zelda fans their means of making their own dungeons and they will be entertained forever!