While replaying the remake of Link's Awakening for the fourth time last year I've experienced some fatigue when it comes to the Chamber Dungeon, mainly because I tend to solve the twelve basic challenges in the same way. However, things took a turn with the twelve "golden challenges", where I've experimented more and came up with some challenges of my own.
These additional challenges are fully optional and only become available at the very end of the game, where each of them rewards you with a gold Rupee. It nicely goes hand in hand with buying all the expensive Chamber Stones at the Town Tool Shop and it's quite the extension of play time that you get there, where it took me multiple evenings to go through it all again
But I was quite motivated and still am, mainly because I was mixing things up more and tried to come up with some new ideas or requirements for some of the challenges. With the "Dungeon Song" for example, where the arrangement looks like an ocarina, I've created a dungeon with multiple dead ends, where it's very advantageous to play Manbo's Mambo in order to warp back to the entrance, so that you would play your Ocarina more often.
With the "Zig-Zaggy" challenge I usually came up with something quite non-linear in the past, because it invites you to use the crossroad rooms at the center. But this time I came up with a completely linear and structured solution:
You go clockwise through the whole dungeon and you will run into all these t-junctions with a boss battle inside. After defeating the boss you can pick up the treasure chest from the alcove room and move on. At the center you will also have to go through a series of boss battles in a circle. It essentially became a bit of a boss rush, but I enjoyed the very systematic approach.
Speaking of boss rushes, I always liked the concept of using the "Skull Arrangement" challenge for one, where for the first time ever I managed to squeeze in absolutely all chambers with a boss or mini-boss inside, no exceptions:
This was tricky to do, because there are so many mini-boss panels with the exact same exits, where last time I tried this I didn't manage to include the other Gohma twins chamber. But this new version has finally everything inside.
Of course such a dungeon is ultimately fun, because the boss fights are all very short and easy. If they were any difficult, then you would just torture yourself with such a big dungeon full of bosses. Or if the boss fights were longer and more "cinematic", like in later Zelda games, then this would just drag on and test your patience unnecessarily. But with the quick boss fights in Link's Awakening this whole thing works rather well.
It's even a bit disappointing how some of the mini-bosses are just dead ends with no reason to go inside. Two of those house the Master Stalfos, where at least his fourth room should have spawned a treasure chest, since this is where you get the Hookshot in the original dungeon. And the Grim Creeper simply was done dirty in the Chamber Dungeon. There is no reason to ever fight him there, where his chamber either should have had another exit or a treasure chest.
Finally, with "The Supreme Shape" I went with the exact opposite: no boss chambers allowed, except for the one at the end, which is preset. This challenge invites you to cheese it by just linking the entrance to the boss chamber, while filling the rest of dungeon with chambers that don't have chests or locked doors... which are a lot of them. But this time I wanted to play it for real and also had this system where the top- and bottommost rows are filled with chests, while the rest of dungeon doesn't get any.
And it's these little self-imposed challenges that can make the Chamber Dungeon really fun and interesting. People go into this feature with the mindset of getting a dungeon maker, where you only will be disappointed. It's more of a puzzle, where it's mainly about clearing the Dampé's challenges. This can be too easy, however, with a few exceptions, but by adding some rules of your own the puzzle aspect will truly start to shine.
While experimenting I also found out something new to me. I've always assumed that you need pairs of stairs, so that you're not allowed to have an uneven number of them. But that's actually not the case, you can leave single stairs in your dungeons, which then lead either into the Moldorm pit from Level 1 or the key pit from Level 4:
Both of them have a flying heart inside as an incentive to go down there. The flying hearts are still present in Hero Mode for some reason, but this is true for any chamber that have them. And this can be quite useful.
Anyway, overall the Chamber Dungeon truly feels like a whole game within a game, where you can spend a good amount of time just with playing dungeons you've just put together. It's a great tool for quickly re-experiencing some of the dungeon content from Link's Awakening and despite its simplicity and repetition I really had a good time with it once more.
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