Monday, June 3, 2024

Tears of the Kingdom Puzzle (Ravensburger)

As a small birthday present to myself and some bad weather entertainment for the weekend, I got a jigsaw puzzle of the cover art of Tears of the Kingdom. It was made and published by Ravensburger, a German toy and puzzle company, has 1000 pieces and normally costs 16.99€, though I got for 6€ less, where this was a very good deal. As far as I can tell, this is the only Zelda-themed puzzle from this company, but they have done stuff for Super Mario and Pokémon in the past.

Anyway, we worked on this as a pair over the course of three days and it was quite fun for the most part. I like how the puzzle has this frame with the Triforces in each corner, because makes it easier to identify certain pieces that are next to the edge, because their tabs still have a part of the frame on them. Then you will probably start assembling the logo and the sky island with Link on it, because those pieces stand out more with their colors.

As for the rest, you have the blue sky at the top, and some darker landmarks with Hyrule Castle and Death Mountain, while the clouds in the bottom right also have their own "texture" to have them sorted. Then there is the storm cloud and the sky island above the logo, but afterwards things get a lot more challenging, because it's effectively fifty shades of cyan. In some areas in the middle you might as well be working on one of those one-colored puzzles, where it's all about finding the pieces with the right shape.

(I've also noticed for the first time how in this artwork the sun is still shining from the north, while in the game they've changed this to the south.)

If you're looking for something simpler, on New Year's Day we did a Breath of the Wild puzzle from Winning Moves with the free climbing illustration:

This only has 500 pieces and we could finish it within a couple of hours. It also comes with a poster of the motive, but it's as small as the puzzle and folded, so not a real reason to buy. I can't really say how much this has cost originally, because I got as a present from some other Zelda fans (from the ZeldaChronicles community) last year, who weren't really into puzzles and just wanted to get rid of it. But it looks like the puzzles from Winning Moves are a bit more expensive...

I would get another one from Ravensburger, though, where I'm hoping that they will do the Game Awards artwork for Tears of the Kingdom as well, because I love that motive so much. Though, it probably would even be more challenging than the first one, because a lot of the sky looks the same.

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