Easily the biggest addition to the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on Nintendo Switch is the so called "Chamber Dungeon", a mode where you're puzzling together your own dungeons to solve challenges made by Dampé. For this task you're mainly placing chambers from the existing dungeons in the game on a grid.
This can even be seen as a first step into a "Zelda Maker", but for now this feature leaves quite some things to be desired. At the same time it's also the perfect hook for new content, may it be new challenges, new chambers or new "plus effects".
So, let's take a look at what can and maybe even should be done with the Chamber Dungeon via a free update to the game.
Online Sharing
Certainly the most requested feature for the Chamber Dungeon is online sharing. The game actually has a proper interface for playing other players' dungeons in place, but it only supports sharing them via amiibo. Which in times of paying for Nintendo's online services this feels like an odd restriction. Both Super Mario Maker 2 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate allow their players to share their creations online, so why not Link's Awakening?
Content moderation wouldn't even require much work, because there aren't many inappropriate things you could do here, except for maybe building a dungeon that is shaped like a swastika. But then again, it's not like Nintendo has never done that... (Small joke on the sidelines, of course this aimed at the religious origins of the symbol.)
If you want to keep things super simple, you could just limit the sharing of dungeons to friends, where you can challenge them. Create a dungeon, play through it and send it to a friend to see if he or she can beat your best time. There could be an entry fee based on the dungeon's complexity and the better player wins it all.
However, there might be a reason why Nintendo didn't want to include online sharing and that's because the feature in itself doesn't allow customization on a level, where it's interesting enough to play other people's creations. It all would be very similar, which leads us to the next point...
New Free Mode Customizations
With or without online sharing available, it would be nice to customize your dungeons a little bit further than what you can do currently. Of course the Chamber Dungeon revolves first and foremost around solving Dampé's challenges, where you use the chambers from existing dungeons to fill out what's supposed to be a dungeon puzzle. Being able to modify certain aspects of these arrangements would probably break the entire mode...
And this is why all of these proposed customization options will only be available when arranging a dungeon on one of your open slots, under the "Free" tab. This is where you can build whatever you want, where it shouldn't be an issue, if you could modify the dungeons even further.
- Naming: It lets you freely choose a name for your dungeon, instead of the default label of "Shrine / Cave / Maze / Labyrinth of [player name]".
- Music: You can now change the background music of your dungeon, where you're able to choose from the three variations of the Chamber Dungeon music, all nine music tracks from the main dungeons (including the Color Dungeon), the music of the Wind Fish's Egg, Dream Shrine and Kanalet Castle.
There will also be a new remix of the Death Mountain (Level 9) dungeon music from the first Zelda game available, as well as a "per chamber" mode, where in each chamber it plays the music from the dungeon the chamber is from. Special chambers will play the default Chamber Dungeon music in this mode. - Restrictions: You will be able to set one or multiple of the following restrictions for your own dungeon: "No Sword", "Heart Shortage" and "Time Limit". For the last two you can even set the amount of hearts and the exact time. Unlike in Dampé's original challenges, you can also combine all three restrictions together.
- Tunnel Controls: Right now the game automatically connects the stairs that are closest to each other. After the update you will be able to change the connections by pressing the Y button on a chamber that has stairs. The check functionality will move to the (-) button for this. Again, this function will only be available for your own arrangements, because it would break some of Dampé's challenges.
Ideally, this will also let you choose the tunnel for the connection, where like chambers every tunnel can only be used once. Certain chambers might dictate the tunnel, however, like the secret underwater tunnel from Level 5. - Door Controls: This will let you change the doors on any chamber by using the R-Stick. Simply move onto the chamber and then press in the direction of the door to either add or remove a lock. Additionally, with this you could also switch to bombable walls or one-way doors.
- Warp Points: You will be able to place a warp point back to the entrance by pressing the R-Stick in chambers that have bosses or mini-bosses. This only works once per dungeon and it doesn't work in the Nightmare's Lairs, of course.
All of this would already give you a lot more options to make your dungeons truly unique, without swaying away from the current chamber-based system.
New Challenges
The update will add four (or more) new golden challenges that become available together with the existing ones. These challenges will have the shapes "E", "L", "D" and "A", following the "Supreme Shape" challenge, but maybe not as easy...
The new challenges will have different restrictions and will also provide even trickier tasks than before, but each of them will only get you another 300 Rupees for completing them.
Lucky Chamber Dungeons
So far Dampé has let Link do all the arranging of dungeons, but in this mode he will try his luck and build some dungeons himself, where the player will have to face some randomly generated dungeons. The outcomes might be erratic, so be careful. You will be able to choose from different difficulties, which are related to the different dungeon sizes that come from creating custom challenges:
- Shrine
- Cave
- Maze
- Labyrinth
The more chambers you unlock, the more tiers become available. And the higher the tier, the better the Rupee reward will be for clearing the random dungeon. Dampé will also offer you to save a dungeon onto your free slots, once you've cleared it.
Clearing the "Labyrinth" tier might also reward you with a new +Effect...
New Chambers
Having more options and challenges is good and all, but the real meat of the Chamber Dungeon are the chambers. They provide the actual content that you piece together for Dampé's and your own entertainment. And adding new chambers is the easiest way of adding more content to this game.
Currently, there are 193 different chambers available, including all unlockable extra chambers and the special chambers from amiibo, as well as the "plus effects". That's only seven short of 200 and we can easily get there by simply adding some things that are blatantly missing. Here are some ideas:
- Dodongo Snakes' Chamber (Key Cavern)
- Green Bob-omb / Bombite Chamber (Key Cavern)
- Anti-Kirby's Chamber (Eagle's Tower)
- Entrance: Wind Fish's Egg
- Boss Chamber: Nightmares
The chambers from the Wind Fish's Egg will become available, once you've cleared the game (your save file needs a star on it). However, you will only be able to use the entrance and the final boss chamber, because anything else would probably be overshooting things. The other chambers will be (retroactively) added whenever you have unlocked all the chambers from their respective dungeons.
Nothing from the Key Cavern's large area has been turned into chambers and while this might be understandable, this leaves some weird omissions. The above room features the only mini-boss battle that didn't get turned into a chamber somehow. The Dodongo Snakes from Levels 6 and 8 are there, even with two available variants for each of their chambers, where this is already the mini-boss with the most occurrences inside the Chamber Dungeon. Still, the original fight without any holes in the ground or an elevated area is missing, where it probably would have been better to have this one instead of the (unnecessary) variants of the other Dodongo Snake chambers...
The Green Bombites (the ticking Time Bob-ombs) are in another special room from the same area, where it feels like this could be turned into an interesting chamber. So far none of the chambers in the Chamber Dungeon feature Bombites, where this is a missing enemy in this mode.
Another weird omission is the Anti-Kirby from the Eagle's Tower, who doesn't get featured at all in the Chamber Dungeon. And overall the Eagle's Tower doesn't have many chambers to begin with, where giving the Kirby a chamber of its own would certainly be nice to have.
New Special Chambers
Other than missing chambers from the original dungeons, the update could also add some more special chambers that aren't found anywhere in the game already. You get those from scanning different Zelda amiibo, where there already have been five special chambers as unlockables, most for some of the mini-bosses that you meet elsewhere, like the Armos Knight. The update could add a couple more, like the following:
- Cracked Floor Chamber
- Lanmola's Chamber
If you take a look at the official website, the "Cracked Floor Chamber" gets even advertised as one of the chambers you get from amiibo, but it's not available so far. Instead you get the "Winged Item Chamber", which doesn't have a single cracked floor. But a chamber that is made entirely out of cracked floors could be fun, especially when it's combined with the "+Bombs Effect".
In addition this should add the Lanmola mini-boss from the Yarna Desert, which is the only mini-boss that isn't available in the Chamber Dungeon somehow. They could just make a room that has a sand floor, maybe even the quick sand pit, where falling into the hole hurts you and sets you at the edge of the sand pit.
Technically, there is still one mini-boss missing, though, and that's the Turtle Rock entrance battle. However, this one might be too far into the game and too special to be considered for the "special chambers". They are all available right from the start, but you would need the Frog's Song of Soul and Bombs to finish the battle.
New +Effects
In addition to chambers, there could also be new "+Effects" (which do count for the total of chambers by the way), which can be applied to your placed chambers. Six of them already exist, but there is potential for more, like for example:
- +Fairy Effect
- +Cucco Effect
The +Fairy Effect would simply add a fairy to the chamber as a free healing opportunity. Like the +Hearts Effect you can only use this once per Chamber Dungeon. The +Cucco Effect adds a Cucco to the chamber, which unleashes a Cucco Revenge Squad on the chamber, if it gets hit by you. So, be careful!
Those new +Effects could be gotten from the Lucky Chamber Dungeon challenges, but it's also possible that Nintendo might release a new Marin amiibo, which gets released around the same time as the update and unlocks one of these effects.
With all of these suggestions we would be already looking at 200+ chambers! But why stop there? GREZZO could go as far as adding another bonus dungeon with the sole purpose of getting more chambers for your Chamber Dungeon into the game...
The Original Chamber Dungeon
This will be another side quest, where you meet Dampé in the Tabahl Wasteland. This can happen at any time after the Chamber Dungeon has become available. Dampé will tell you that he has found something interesting and uncovers a tree with an entrance. He tells you that you should explore this place in order to add to your collection of chambers...
And this turns out to be a replica of the Eagle Labyrinth, the first Zelda dungeon ever:
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Almost everything for this would already be in the game. GREZZO could re-use the music from the Color Dungeon and we already have the Keese, Stalfos, Zol and even the Wallmaster enemies available. There is also already a Goriya in the game, where they could use his model for a new Boomerang-throwing mini-boss.
And the Old Man could be replaced with an Owl Statue, so that the Stone Beak will be still present, since this is an item that exists in all dungeons. It could even still give you a cryptic hint about how the "eastmost penninsula is the secret" or something that fits the dungeon.
The only completely new entity would be Aquamentus, the boss of the dungeon. This could even be seen as a first taste at a remake of Oracle of Seasons, where its Gnarled Root Dungeon would be very similar. Maybe this could go even hand in hand, where GREZZO could be working on the Oracle games next.
Instead of the Bow and the Triforce piece you will find two new Chamber Stones as rewards, which will offer modified versions of chambers from this new dungeon, mainly one for the boss. Of course this won't feel very rewarding for those, who don't care about the Chamber Dungeon, but it will be made clear by Dampé from the beginning that this mainly serves as an addition to this feature.
(Another problem might be that this ends up being too similar to the Color Dungeon, which would be even right in the neighborhood and become available at the same time...)
Anyway, clearing this bonus dungeon will reward you with 18 new chambers (including the ones from the Chamber Stones, but excluding the Old Man's chamber), where we would be looking at a total of 220 chambers now! This dungeon would also add a special three-way entrance, which is something that none of the other dungeons have offered so far.
Also, all of this would be within the limits of 16 chambers per type, so GREZZO could be adding all of these chambers and the ones mentioned above without altering the current chamber interface.
Upgraded Shadow Link
You can add Shadow Link to most chambers in your dungeon, if you have unlocked the "+Shadow Link Effect" via the new Link amiibo for Link's Awakening. However, this currently might not be worth the trouble, because when compared to the Shadow Link battles in both A Link Between Worlds and Tri Force Heroes the fights are rather dull here. All do you is block and wait for him to do a Spin Attack, where you can strike and then repeat the process.
Those fights are super boring and this is mainly because your items don't have any effect on the Shadow Link and the Shadow Link isn't using any items as well. That's the main difference when compared to the Nintendo 3DS versions, where this problem can be solved easily. After the update the Shadow Link can be hurt with your items and will able to use any weapon that you have. This includes the Magic Rod, so be careful not to be burnt.
Quicker Treasure Chests
Last, but certainly not least, the update should fasten the whole process of getting treasure chests inside the Chamber Dungeon. They should spawn more quickly and you should be able to dismiss the texts much faster as well. Ideally, it would just drop the keys and Rupees for you to pick them up without any interruptions.
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