Nightmare Chamber Dungeons

This special project was an idea that I've been having for quite some time, but didn't want to realize this until I had a completed Hero Mode save file of Link's Awakening on my own Nintendo Switch at the ready. Well, this is now the case. And it's no secret that I was having quite a lot of fun with the Chamber Dungeon on all my playthroughs of the remake, where I've spent a lot of time with it.

Other than completing the challenges in different ways, I've also made my own creations in the past with a small variety of different concepts. The Chamber Dungeon is very limited when it comes to creating dungeons, however, and is best enjoyed as a puzzle, where you try to fit the rooms together, while fulfilling multiple criteria.

Now, what I had in mind for this project was creating "nightmare versions" of all the dungeon from Link's Awakening by following a set of rules. Of course there are clear limitations of how difficult you can make things, but I was trying my best to make them as challenging as possible.

With the exception of the Color Dungeon, none of the dungeons can be fully recreated within the Chamber Dungeon, only parts of them. But these chambers should be in place where they used to be originally, whenever possible. I've used my chamber check from three years ago as a basis for this whole thing.

The rest of the chambers needed to be substituted, which is were the puzzle aspect comes in. The extra chambers for the respective dungeon were given priority, but because of this you will always have the boss twice within the dungeon, where I've usually made the one of the end "harder" by adding the +Bombs effect. As for the rest, I try to go with chambers that have something in common, like an enemy or an element, but what was most important was that the overall path of the dungeon stays in tact. Also, treasure chests should be around the same locations, but this was not a necessity.

And once everything was put in place, I've used +Effects on almost every chamber, where all of them have to be used at least once per dungeon, so there will always be a Wallmaster and a Shadow Link causing trouble. The Shadow Link isn't actually very difficult on his own, because all you have to do is hold R until he has unleashed a Spin Attack, where this is the time to strike. Rinse and repeat. It's most effective when combined with mini-bosses, where he will still attack you, unlike with the nine main bosses, where he just disappears for the moment.

The Wallmaster will leave you be with any sort of boss, even while fighting Shadow Link, but it will otherwise be constantly annoying you once he got summoned and even after it got defeated. Just leaving the current chamber will revive it and he will also revive after a short while in the same chamber... With some dungeons I've made it so that the Wallmaster can be avoided or postponed, with others you will have it on your toes right from the beginning. But it's interesting what you can actually do with one, once you're forced to deal with it, e.g. destroy cracked blocks or defeat enemies.

Now, let's take a look at each nightmare dungeon individually:

The Color Dungeon was my first creation, which I made when I've first replayed Link's Awakening back in 2021. It's where this entire idea started. At first, I simply enjoyed recreating the Color Dungeon inside the Chamber Dungeon, because it's possible from start to finish. It's the only dungeon where every single room got turned into a chamber. But then I wanted to mix things up by making it as difficult as possible by adding +Effects everywhere.

You will run into the Wallmaster right at the first room with the color crystals, so that even going into the Rupee room may give you some trouble. It's where I've put the +Rupees effect, because otherwise it wouldn't be worth the detour.

It's raining bombs pretty much everywhere in this dungeon, which can screw you up quite badly with all the color puzzles. The worst is certainly the room with the nine color switches. If you don't solve this quickly, then one of the raining bombs will mess things up. The bombs will stop eventually, but the Wallmaster keeps coming back and he can also hit the switches, so this can turn a true puzzle nightmare. The bombs can cause such a mess here that this nightmare dungeon still feels like the worst of them, despite being much smaller than the rest.

I've always hated the Giant Buzz Blob and naturally I had to make it worse by adding the Shadow Link there. Originally, I had the Shadow Link in the room with the nine color switches, but then you could just easily avoid him by rushing straight to the boss.

Speaking of the boss, I could have gone for an extended versions with the second Hardhit Beetle and the Great Fairy's Chamber, but fighting the same boss twice in a row seemed a bit lame. Also, then I would have needed to include a chamber from another dungeon, but I wanted to keep things clean in this case, because it was possible.

Since you only get eight free slots for arranging dungeons, I had to copy this over into Hero Mode via amiibo. But that's fine, because the Color Dungeon always was supposed to be an extra dungeon anyway.

The Tail Cave is the perfect example of a dungeon where you have an uneven number of stairs. In this case the stair case before the boss actually went down into the Moldorm pit, but dropping down from the Moldorm boss chamber won't get you there (this would have been an amazing detail, though).

I then came up with an extended version of the dungeon, which has a longer tail. This was to include the second extra chamber with the Blade Traps and Keese, which was based on the chamber with the staircase to the Moldorm pit right below. It has its exits to the south and east, which was otherwise a bad fit. But with the longer tail the dungeon map looks better, too:

Since this is the first dungeon, it's not supposed to be too difficult. I've put the Wallmaster into the room with the Secret Seashell, so you can decide whether you want to face it early or postpone it as long as possible. Right next door Shadow Link is fought together with a Vire, which isn't too tricky as long as you're shielding. You can even reflect Vire's projectiles to hurt the Shadow Link. Or you can avoid fighting them together by standing still in the beginning. The Shadow Link won't spawn until you've moved a bit.

Originally I thought that you may be able to avoid the Wallmaster altogether by letting the Shadow Link follow you into the room with the treasure chest. But the game will still remember that you've entered the Wallmaster chamber and summon it once the Shadow Link got defeated.

With the Bottle Grotto putting things together got already more tricky and I was doubting at first that it was even possible, because of how the staircases connect. You have no control over it and it uses the nearest neighbor principle, so the staircases around the Hinox are getting connected and essentially create a dead end there.

In order to make things work I had to sneak in another staircase where the Conch Horn normally would be. Otherwise the entire upper part of the dungeon would have been cut off and the whole thing wouldn't have been playable... So, you need some leeway here and there. But this also creates a completely different route through the dungeon, where you may end up finding the Nightmare Key where the Power Bracelet or the Map used to be.

With Level 2 I always associate the uneasy feeling of entering the second half of the dungeon, where you have to face the Hinox after the underground tunnel. It's the one point in the game where I still might screw up and die, even after all these years. But of course the Hinox is no threat in the late game, plus he's not even there at the end of the tunnel.

Which is why I've added Shadow Link right there into the Moblin Chief's Chamber... Having this here as a mini-boss felt like a good fit, because you have to battle the Moblin Chief before Level 2. And combining him with Shadow Link makes for an interesting battle, where you have to be on the defense quite heavily. Usually the best strategy is to defeat the mini-boss as quickly as possible and then chill with the Shadow Link, but that's not possible here, because the Moblin Chief can only be hurt after he slammed into the wall.

The Wallmaster also  appears right before the first tunnel, just to give you this threat of being put back to the beginning for the entire rest of the dungeon. Since the Hinox is entirely optional in this design, I've added the +Rupees effect to his chamber, so you have some incentive to go there.

The Key Cavern was a trickier composition, mainly because you don't have any real floors inside the Chamber Dungeon and the stairs needed to be connected just in the right way. There also aren't that many chambers from Level 3 and some of them don't have their stairs anymore, so I had to improvise quite a bit. The small key now looks more like a lock pick, but I had to add the hallways with stairs there to make the necessary connections.

You first play through the big key, where the entire 4x3 part at the top had to be substituted, which is a shame. At least I could use the two extra chambers based on Level 3 in this area. I've also put the Dodongo Snakes room from Level 8 there into the middle, which isn't entirely truthful to the original dungeon in terms of doorways, but sacrifices had to be made.

The Shadow Link also waits for you here in the Ball and Chain Trooper's Chamber, which isn't a big deal, because you can just defeat the trooper very quickly. But it's the same idea as with the Moblin Chief in the "Nightmare Bottle Grotto".

The Angler's Tunnel was a lot more satisfying to craft, despite the fact that it even has less chambers available than Level 3. But the map looks identical to the original and I could make good use of the extra chambers with the bosses to fill some space.

After half of the dungeon you can make a choice between two different Cue Ball fights. The original square has +Bombs, the other to the south has the Shadow Link inside. I never even tried the latter, where I thought it was okay to have at least one dungeon where you can avoid the Shadow Link entirely.

You will have the Wallmaster stalking you the entire time, though, but I liked how he interacted with some elements of the dungeon here, like smashing crystals and cracked blocks.

The Catfish's Maw is the first in the "Labyrinth" tier (all the others before have been "Mazes") and its map shape could also be recreated quite faithfully. You get more than half of the original rooms to work with, which is great.

As a gimmick I wanted to have each of the Master Stalfos chambers to have a different +Effect, where the two dead ends have +Hearts and +Rupees to give you an incentive to enter them... The ones that have to be passed of course throw bombs and the Shadow Link at you, just because. You can skip the former (and easier) battle, however, by using the connected stairs.

Where you normally would find the Hookshot may also your final stop for the nightmare key. Well, technically it's the room right before, but you may decide to still fight the Master Stalfos for some Rupees (not that I still needed any at this point). So, you still get the same order with the Master Stalfos rooms, given that you're doing things efficiently.

The Wallmaster here will only become a threat later on and can also be postponed, because it was getting a bit much at this point...

The Face Shrines looks much bulkier with this extended design, but this is the result of the one chamber above the Smasher, which normally loops you back three rooms into the south. Of course this is not possible with the Chamber Dungeon, so gaps had to be filled and this was the best spot to include the extra chamber with the flying tiles, which you can get from the Town Tool Shop.

Unlike the original dungeon, here you start by clearing the east half of the dungeon. Well, you don't have to, but it's more efficient, because the final boss room is now connected to the west half. This is even true to the original dungeon map, it's just the insides of the rooms of Level 6 were partitioned.

The Smasher can be avoided entirely by using the stairs, but there are the bosses from Level 4 to make up for it in the area with the water trench. You can basically make a choice here between fighting the Smasher or the Cue Ball. Or both, if you want to be thorough.

At first I was going to partner the Smasher with the Shadow Link, but then I included the Armos Knight's Chamber in the upper west wing to make the dungeon symmetrical again. And having the Shadow Link there felt like a more meaningful challenge, while it stays true to same idea from Levels 2 and 3 with the Moblin Chief and the Ball & Chain Trooper. The Armors Knight is the mini-boss who has to be fought before Level 6 (well, you can do it earlier, but this is the latest point), so it's the same pattern as before.

Sadly, there is no chamber for the Lanmola from the Yarna Desert, which would have been great for Level 4.

The Eagle's Tower has always been my favorite dungeon in the base game, but here it's among my least favorite compositions, next to Level 3. There are just so many rooms missing and I didn't even bother with keeping all of the existing chambers in the right spot.

The Grim Creeper now sits down at the first floor, where he can be ignored. There is nothing to change this, because the whole chamber is pointless. I could have added the +Rupees in there, but I was saving this for the next floor..

There you have two Smashers, which are there to represent the pillars that are getting smashed with the iron ball. Pretty clever, huh? They can be entirely avoided, however, and so can the Wallmaster. I had one dungeon where you can fully avoid the Shadow Link (Level 4), so I wanted one where this is true for the Wallmaster as well and here we go. It's also interesting how you basically want to go around the center of 2F, while it's the most important part of the original dungeon with the four pillars.

Anyway, the Shadow Link gets partnered with a Rolling Bones. I already could have done this in the first dungeon, but I didn't, so here is to make up for it, but of course this is one of the easier combos, if not the easiest. He would have made a great combo with the Grim Creeper if there were a chamber with him that you actually need to pass through...

Last but not least, we have Turtle Rock, which got a bit chubbier at the top, but there is a good reason for that. It otherwise would have been tricky to include the extra chambers for the dungeon, where there are five in total and this solution features all of them.

Overall the dungeon has the most chambers to offer with a total of 30, not counting the additional ones. You can recreate two thirds of the entire dungeon, where this was the most fun to make after the Color Dungeon..

The chambers for the Dodongo Snakes both don't fit the original flow, however, so I've put the extra version (also available in the Town Tool Shop) with an exit to the south one space north of where they originally were. It's also connected to the second Hot Head, where here you need to fight it in order to get to the first Blaino, where originally you would obtain the Magic Rod.

On the other side of this expansion you have the extra chamber with the cracked floors and the second Blaino, where the latter simply had to be friends with Shadow Link. This is one of the tougher situations, but as always the key is to take out the mini-boss as quickly as possible. And it's a good finale for the dungeon, where this potentially is the room with the Nightmare Key.

The original Turtle Rock toys with the idea of throwing you back to the entrance, not just with Blaino, but also with the "Vacuum Mouth" in the southwest corner room. So, it seemed like a good fit to expand this with a Wallmaster, who follows you right from the beginning. After you could avoid it entirely in Level 7, I had to just go with the worst for the final dungeon.

I've been iterating most of these dungeons multiple times to make them more difficult, but for the most part this just resulted in placing the Wallmaster and the Shadow Link in tougher positions. There is only so much you can do here and a veteran player (like myself) won't have much trouble with any of these, even in Hero Mode.

And during this project there were three flaws with the Chamber Dungeon that really became apparent once more and made things less enjoyable:

• There are simply too many omissions, mainly chambers from the Levels 3 and 7. With that there are also some enemies that never appear in the Chamber Dungeon, like the Bombites, Like Likes, and Anti-Kirby. It's just disappointing.
  
  
• The chosen tunnels are just random. If you want a specific tunnel somewhere, you will have to remove the chamber with the staircase, place it again, and hope for the best. Of course you won't know what tunnel goes there until you've played the dungeon again...
  
  
• There is always the same music. Even though it has four different renditions based on the size of the dungeon, it just gets very repetitive after going through the 24 challenges and then eight more dungeons. An option to choose from any of the original dungeon tracks would have been really awesome for this project and could have set a much better mood.
  

Still, this is something I wanted to do and something that feels like a great conclusion to my long journey with the Chamber Dungeon. If Nintendo ever were to give us a proper dungeon maker for Zelda, I would probably make good use of it.

Chamber Dungeon Land: Twelve Gold Rupees

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.

Right now I'm also making use of all eight free slots for a little project of mine, but more on that soon in a separate post... For now I have fully completed the remake of Link's Awakening on my Nintendo Switch, both in Normal and Hero Mode.

Replaying Link's Awakening in Hero Mode

Link's Awakening is one of the shortest Zelda games, given that you know your way around Koholint, which makes it a good choice if you're looking for some nostalgia with little commitment. As I've said many times on this blog before, the original version on the GameBoy was my first Zelda game, which I've gotten for Christmas 1997, 25 years ago. And it became a bit of a tradition to replay this game once per year, ideally during Christmas.

This time I already started on my birthday, however, right at the beginning of June. This was after Mysplaced had made the news, a game that copied the artstyle of the Link's Awakening remake, which made me want to play it once more. And since I haven't cleared it in Hero Mode on my own Nintendo Switch yet (I did so before on someone else's system), there were multiple incentives to replay Link's Awakening on the Nintendo Switch.

I didn't get all too far at the time, where I've only played for a couple of hours in one evening. It was enough to have beaten the Bottle Grotto and the Color Dungeon, which is by far the hardest part in Hero Mode. But once you've obtained the Secret Medicine, a filled Fairy Bottle, and finally the Blue Mail, there is little to worry about, unless you're doing lots of mistakes.

So, I basically had the hard work already done half a year ago, but I ran into a bit of a roadblock with the Chamber Dungeon at the time. As much as I have loved this feature in the past, doing it all for the fourth time gets a bit stale. As a result I went with the most simplistic and efficient solutions this time...

You still want to play the Challenges as early as possible, especially in Hero Mode, because it gives you some valuable goodies, like a Piece of Heart or a Fairy Bottle. And if you don't start with the Chamber Dungeon until later in the game, it will get a bit much all at once. It's better to do the new Challenges once they become available to have some more variety in activities.

However, this also may cause certain habits or patterns. For example, I prefer to use the new tiles I got from the most recent dungeon. And because of this the solutions tend to become somewhat similar to my previous playthroughs, where I've done the same thing.

Things get more interesting with the twelve golden challenges in the post game, which is where you have everything available, including the +Monsters effect from the Trendy Game. But I'm saving this for later right now and I also plan on building more difficult versions of all eight main dungeons (I already have one of the Color Dungeon stored to an amiibo).

As for Hero Mode, I'm still thinking that its implementation here wasn't a good idea. I would have preferred something that made use of the +Monsters effect during the entire game, while you are still able to find Fairies and maybe apples normally. Every damage taken accumulates, because you won't find anything to heal inside dungeons, so you might end up in a situation where you feel inclined to leave the dungeon, heal somewhere, and return. It's not more difficult, it's just less convenient.

I've also struggled a bit in the beginning, because the controls are so different from all the other games that I have been playing this years, which includes Death's Door, Hollow Knight, and Metroid Dread. They all have in common that you attack with Y (on a Nintendo controller) and jump or roll with B. In Link's Awakening it's the other way around, where the sword is set to B and I usually keep the Roc's Feather equipped to Y.

It's not really a complaint, because they simply stuck to traditional Zelda button controls, which haven't really changed up until Breath of the Wild. The controls also make sense the way they are with the two item buttons. But it's a factor where I have been making some mistakes at first...

There was also a surprise situation in the Key Cavern for me, in the room with the three Green Bombites. I wanted to take them out with bombs, as I always do, because it's safer than attacking them with your sword. But one of the Zols then jumped against my bomb and kicked it towards me... I didn't know that they could do that in the remake! It's such a crazy detail and a fun enemy interaction.

The Secret Seashells will always be one of my favorite collectibles, simply because they can be found anywhere. I've said this before, but it's well done how they game let's you obtain the Koholint Sword after getting the Flippers, which also used to be the case in the original GameBoy version, only that this time you need twice as many shells. There are 41 Secret Seashells accessible at this point, so you need to find all but one available.

I always turn the Seashell Sensor off right away and go by memory alone, but this time I completely forgot the seashell hidden at the beach where Marin waits for you. I guess, it's just not as obvious as the other ones below the ground. The one from Christine also usually eludes me, but otherwise the seashell additions in the remake are all very memorable and that's fun.

But I'm disappointed that it doesn't refill your hearts when obtaining the Koholint Sword. That's a bit of an oversight, because you want to feel the power of sword beams right after exiting the Seashell Mansion with your shiny new sword...

As for Pieces of Heart, this time I've forgotten about the one in the cave that leads back up to the Raft Shop. Since you can just restart the mini-game at the end of a ride, using this "shortcut" wasn't necessary and therefore I didn't pass by this piece at all. And I didn't notice this until I've reached Turtle Rock, where only one Piece of Heart should be left.

Anyway, this was fun, I greatly enjoy the visuals and the overall quality of the remake, save for the issues with the frame rate on the overworld. But nonetheless I really hope that we will be getting remakes of Oracle of Ages & Seasons in the same style after Tears of the Kingdom.

PS: ← ↑ → → ↑ ← ← ↑

35th Anniversary of Zelda

Today 35 years ago was a very special day, where each and every one of us were sitting in their traditional Japanese houses and inserted their copy of THE HYRULE FANTASY ゼルダの伝説 into their Famicom Disk Systems for the very first time. A day we surely will never forget!

Well, to be fair, most Zelda fans (including myself) weren't even alive back then and probably also not living in Japan, but the Zelda series is celebrating 35 years of existence nonetheless. It's kind of an odd anniversary, though. The 25th Anniversary was special, because there you're celebrating a quarter century, which is important enough. And with 30 or 40 years you're entering another decade. 35 years on the other hand is just right in the middle of those anniversaries and probably only an excuse to celebrate.

But celebrate we will, if the 35th Anniversary of Super Mario Bros. is any indication. In the end these anniversaries are just a marketing ploy anyway, but we're usually getting some goodies out of this, which can be quite exciting. We Zelda fans sure do love us some merchandise.

There seem to be many people confused out there why Nintendo hasn't brought up the 35th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda already, despite the fact that they've just announced The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD and special Joy-Cons for this game. But this is actually quite normal...

For the anniversaries of Super Mario Bros., which take place on September 13th, Nintendo usually likes to start and announce things earlier in the year, while for Zelda they wait a couple of months, so that these two anniversaries don't clash and don't take the attention away from each other. In case of the 25th Anniversary of Zelda they started things at E3 2011, where they had the first big orchestrated concert for the series. And with the 30th Anniversary they didn't even bring it up until September 2016 with a couple of new amiibo and the Arts & Artifacts artbook.

When it comes to what Nintendo could do for Zelda's 35th Anniversary in 2021 and early 2022, it's really easy to just copy what was done for Super Mario Bros. in the last months:

• Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda
• The Legend of Zelda 35
• The Legend of Zelda 3D Collection
• Nintendo Switch Zelda Gold Edition
• Zelda Items in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• ...
  

But this would be lame and we already know for a fact that Nintendo likes to do something different for Zelda's anniversaries... That doesn't mean that none of these things will be happening, for example the Zelda items for Animal Crossing: New Horizons seem likely in any case. However, the vast majority of things will be something different and we're probably not getting that Zelda theme park anytime soon. A Zelda movie or TV series on the other hand? This would be really something else (even though we know that they are already making a new Mario movie).

Now, here's a number of ideas what Nintendo could potentially do for the 35th Anniversary:

 

1) The Wind Waker HD + Twilight Princess HD

Well, yes... this isn't really all too different from the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection, which came out last year. However, we would be dealing with true HD ports here, ports that might even see some new features, because the Tingle Bottles and Miiverse Stamps don't have their original use anymore.

If they were to add Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask to such a collection as well, they most likely would just be emulated, however, similar to Super Mario 64 in 3D All-Stars. But those games are probably best put towards a Nintendo 64 collection for the Nintendo Switch Online service, which is long overdue. In any case, Skyward Sword HD already proves that Nintendo would sell HD remasters of the Nintendo 64 Zelda games on their own, for sure, so don't expect them.

But to add a little spice to the collection, they could offer an HD remaster of Link's Crossbow Training. This isn't really something that Nintendo would sell on its own, where originally it was part of a bundle with the Wii Zapper. But in an HD collection together with Twilight Princess HD, where Link's Crossbow Training could borrow all HD assets from this title, it would fit really well. And ideally this wouldn't be a time-limited deal.

 

2) Golden Pro Controller

The above collection could go hand in hand with a nice custom Zelda themed Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, like this one:

Of course they could also do an entire golden Nintendo Switch, similar to red and blue Switch for Super Mario, but this might be a little bit too much at this point, especially since we're already getting the Skyward Sword HD Joy-Cons. A Pro Controller on the other hand? You can never have too many of those.

3) Armor Sets in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

Items in Animal Crossing: New Horizons are cool and all, but the Zelda series does have its own platform to do something similar: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. The game will be updated via DLC in 2021, but it could also get some free goodies, like additional armor items.

Curiously, out of the 107 armor pieces in Breath of the Wild, only 60 of them made it into Age of Calamity. And out of those missing, the majority are cameo items from other major Zelda titles:

• Hero set
• Hero of Time set
• Sheik's Mask
• Phantom Ganon set
• Fierce Deity set
  
• Majora's Mask
• Tingle's set
• Hero of the Wind set
  
• Island Lobster Shirt
• Hero of Twilight set
• Midna's Helmet
• Zant's Helmet
• Hero of the Sky set
  
• Phantom set
• Ravio's Hood

All of these would be perfect for celebrating 35 years of Zelda and they could even add a couple more that weren't part of Breath of the Wild. For example there could be a Goron Link outfit for Daruk. They could give the Mask of Truth to Impa (like in Hyrule Warriors). Or Zelda could get outfits based on past princesses. And so on.

 

4) Dungeon Maker

In the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, which came out in 2019, Nintendo and GREZZO have first experimented with what basically was a small dungeon maker. The "Chamber Dungeon" was very basic, but it was founded on the simple grid layout that was utilized by all the dungeons in the original The Legend of Zelda. The dungeon rooms have always the same square shape with their entrances placed at the center.

If nothing else, they could still update Link's Awakening and add a remake of the first Zelda dungeon with Aquamentus as a new boss to the game, as a small way to celebrate the anniversary. However, it will be two years by then and this was more than enough time to expand the idea into its own Zelda title, using the same engine and visuals as Link's Awakening.

This could lead to a sophisticated dungeon maker, where you can fully create your own chambers and so on. And as part of the 35th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, it should also feature various remade dungeons from the first game as an example or part of a single-player experience.

Such a title would also lend itself to multi-player support, where you could design dungeons for more than one player. This would hit multiple birds with one stone, where this could be a dungeon maker, the next multi-player Zelda and a way of celebrating 35 years all in one.

My Chamber Dungeon Creations

Despite its limitations, I was having quite some fun with the new Chamber Dungeon feature in the remake of Link's Awakening. In this post I will show off some of my creations and the ideas behind them. Sadly, there is no easy way of sharing these dungeons yet, so a look at the arrangements will have to suffice.

I've shown most of these already in previous posts, so this might feel somewhat redundant, but I thought it would be nice to have it all in one place.

The Journey

This was my first big creation in the Chamber Dungeon, where the idea was to build something like a boss rush, but also something that let's you re-experience all of the game's dungeons in a compressed form.

The entire dungeon is divided into seven walled off sections, which are only connected via tunnels and only use chambers from the same dungeon. It starts with a Tail Cave section and ends with a Turtle Rock section, where Hot Head waits in the final Nightmare's Lair. You can skip some of the mini-bosses, but every single boss is present at least once with the exception of the Chief Moblin, who didn't really fit in, sadly.

There are only seven sections instead of eight, because not every dungeon has enough stairs available. So, I combined Level 3 with the Color Dungeon and the special chambers, as well as Level 4 with Level 5. But the rests works as intended and it's overall fun to play this as one final dungeon.

By the way, I've tried to create a second version of this dungeon, which includes the Chief Moblin and possibly also the Dodongo Snakes from Level 8, but I've utterly failed multiple times. Putting a dungeon together like this is not as easy as it seems, where it feels like a miracle that I was able to pull it off like above. And this will be a constant reminder how the Chamber Dungeon is first and foremost a dungeon puzzler and not a dungeon maker.

Color Dungeon

This is simply a recreation of the Color Dungeon, chamber by chamber, as accurate as it gets. So, if I ever feel like replaying the Color Dungeon for some reason, I can just go with this version. Though, it doesn't have the nice music.

It's the only dungeon in Link's Awakening, where this is possible, mainly because the Color Dungeon pays homage to the classic dungeons from the first Zelda game, which all have been built out of individual square rooms, which is exactly like the Chamber Dungeon functions.

The Rupee

This is a dungeon to quickly farm Rupees with the "+Rupees Effect", where this can get you about 300 Rupees in one minute. It has the entrance, the chamber for the Rupee rain, another chamber for the Nightmare Key and a short Moldorm boss fight, one after the other.

The rest of the dungeon is just filler, so that the +Rupees Effect kicks in with the best possible amount. But most of these optional chambers happen to be bosses and mini-bosses, where every boss is present except for the Dodongo Snakes and Blaino. So, this can also be used as a boss rush dungeon, if you're feeling like it.

Key Labyrinth

If you thought that the Key Cavern had you juggling lots of keys, pay this dungeon a visit. It's divided in two halves, where one half of the dungeon is entirely optional and contains all the locked doors in the world. The other half contains enough chests for all these optional locked doors, where this lets you collect up to 22 keys for the fun of it:

This isn't really something that I'd want to replay, but as a little "science experiment" this was certainly interesting to experience.

The Big Spiral

This is essentially a recreation of Level 8 from the original 2nd Quest in The Legend of Zelda. It follows the same layout, but of course it's not possible to use identical contents or to connect the tunnels in the same way.

One of the key challenges of the original dungeon was making your way through with only 12 bombs, while facing lots of Dodongo fights. I tried to carry this theme over by using bosses that require bombs, like the Dodongo Snakes, the Master Stalfos and Facade. And there are also some walls that you need to bomb here and there.

Again, it's a shame that you can't select the music for your creations, because the Color Dungeon music would be perfect for this. In the least the "+Monsters Effect" can give you the feeling of playing something from the NES game.

The Letter Z

Because I had quite some fun rebuilding the Level 8 Big Spiral dungeon, I tried another with Level 5 from the 2nd Quest, the Letter Z. The final of Dampé's challenges is also shaped like a Z, where it's certainly a lot bigger than the classic version, but I thought it would be nice to have both in some form.

It didn't turn out to be as good or fun as the Big Spiral recreation, however. There is a chest in the beginning behind a locked door and it's important not to forget about it, when you get your first key in the middle of the dungeon. It's very straight-forward, where it's tempting to move on, but instead you have to go / warp all the way back to get the missing chest or else you will be ending up before the Nightmare's Lair without the proper key.

It's actually one of the few times, where I had to worry about keys in the Chamber Dungeon...

Final Thoughts

Unless I have some other "good" ideas, this should be it for my Chamber Dungeon journey. I've had a lot of fun with this feature so far, but its limitations will probably prevent me from going any further in the future.

It first and foremost needs proper tunnel controls, where I was annoyed how the tunnels constantly changed, whenever I made a small change to the dungeon. Let me connect the stairs the way I want and let met select the tunnel.

Also, I want to change the music so badly, mainly because the Color Dungeon track would be a lot more fitting in many scenarios. The Chamber Dungeon works like classic NES dungeons and naturally you'd want the classic NES dungeon music in this, even though the Chamber Dungeon music is quite alright.

And finally, without the ability to truly share any of this online, where people can properly download and play my creations, it's only half as fun...

Link's Awakening – Chamber Dungeon Review

When it comes to updating, remastering or remaking Zelda games there is usually the question of additional contents, mainly in the form of new dungeons. The Palace of the Four Sword, the Hero's Trial, the Cave of Shadows – they are all examples of added content to an existing Zelda game, for better or worse. And the first Zelda game to ever receive a new dungeon was Link's Awakening DX on the GameBoy Color with its Color Dungeon.

However, these additions might not always be on par with the rest of the game, where the Color Dungeon is already a good example. Link's Awakening has some of the best 2D dungeons in the series, where the addition in the DX version couldn't really live up to the rest, because it felt rather simplistic in comparison.

And so far GREZZO hasn't been known for great level design, where they were mostly making linear levels for the Four Swords Anniversary Edition and Tri Force Heroes. So, it was probably a good decision to go with a "do it yourself" solution here and let the players make their own new dungeons instead...

The Chamber Dungeon is the big, new addition in the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for Nintendo Switch, where according to Eiji Aonuma it was even a key motivator behind the project.

You can find it where the Camera Shop used to be in Link's Awakening DX, to the north of the Tabahl Wasteland and the graveyard. That's a rather fitting spot, because the whole feature is hosted by Dampé, the weird gravedigger, who first appeared in Ocarina of Time and by now has starred in a total of six Zelda games.

You can first play the Chamber Dungeon after beating the second dungeon (even though it would have been possible after the first) and after every dungeon you beat you'll be getting new chambers and challenges. So, like the new Trendy Game this is something, where you might want to return to regularly.

Arranging Dungeons

Dampé lets you build dungeons based on pre-defined chambers in the form of stone tablets that you can collect and place on a grid. This is very reminiscent of the dungeons in the first NES Zelda game, where everything was based on square rooms with centered doorways. Luckily, the dungeons in Link's Awakening were still partly designed like that – the Color Dungeon, which pays homage to the dungeons from the first Zelda game, even in its entirety. So, a lot of it did get transformed into chambers, which automatically unlock after each dungeon.

Each Chamber Dungeon starts with an entrance and ends with a Nightmare's Lair, where both were taken from the nine dungeons in the game. The other chambers all have pre-defined exits, locks, chests and stairways, where the latter connect automatically based on a nearest neighbor principle. For every locked door there needs to be a chest and the last chest that you open will give you the Nightmare Key, which is required to finish the dungeon. That's it. This is how the whole system works, which overall doesn't allow for much customization.

For a dungeon to become playable you need to make sure that everything fits together. So, every door on every chamber needs to lead to another chamber. There need to be enough chests for all the locked doors. There needs to be an even number of stair cases. And of course there need to be the entrance and the Nightmare's Lair, the start and finish point of the dungeon.

The builder menu does a good job at telling you whatever might be missing, so putting together a functional dungeon is a very simple task. The chambers are sorted by the number of exits they provide and the dungeons they are from, where you can quickly navigate the different tabs with the shoulder buttons. Sadly, there are no touch controls available for handheld mode, but arranging a dungeon works good enough with button inputs.

Challenges

However, this isn't just for your own amusement, but instead this is all about solving Dampé's challenges, where you have to place your chambers in a way that fits certain criteria. Often there are fixed chambers in place or sometimes there are tiles where you have to place a locked door, a chest or stairs. Other tiles might be blocked, preventing you from building on them. And for other challenges you have to fill out a certain shape, which is also reminiscent of classic Zelda dungeons, where the maps often were little pixel arts.

Once you're done, you also have to play through the dungeon, where afterwards you get certain rewards from Dampé, including Pieces of Heart, additional chambers and one of the new Fairy Bottles. There are twelve basic challenges in total, which get unlocked over the course of the game. And when you're done with them all you will get twelve advanced challenges, though the latter will only reward you with lots of Rupees.

Some challenges also put restrictions on you when you play them – you either have no sword, only few hearts or a time limit, where you have to carefully consider which chambers you want to use.

But most of it is really trivial, where there are only very few challenges that might actually be "challenging" to overcome. The challenges are rarely ever stopping you from using simple chambers with only easy enemies or no enemies at all. And there are plenty of simple chambers to choose from, which even allows you to trick in many of the challenges one way or the other.

Free Mode

An addition to the challenges you can also freely create your own dungeons on eight open slots. This sounds exciting at first, but you might not get much out of this, except for building your own boss rush or something that helps you farm Rupees. You will already make good use of most of the chambers when you're solving all the challenges, so you might not feel the urge to build even more dungeons afterwards...

And the whole thing only works the way it does, because Link's Awakening has some excellent dungeons in the first place, which are fun to (re)play. So, letting you re-arrange its dungeon rooms in any way you want can certainly be fun and interesting. But the individual rooms lack the big picture of the original dungeons and playing the same puzzles and bosses again and again can get boring quickly...

So, in order for this to be more appealing it needs two things. The first would be online sharing, because right now you can only share your creations by saving them onto an amiibo, which feels like an awkward limitation in the times of the paid Nintendo Switch Online service. If you don't have any friends nearby who also play the game, you probably won't ever get to play the dungeons created by others.

But the way the dungeon building works right now this is even understandable, because all the dungeons out there would end up feeling quite similar. There simply aren't enough customization options to make your dungeons more unique. It should already start with giving them a name or choosing the music track. And ideally you should also be able to set locked doors, to connect stairs any way you want and to select restrictions, like a time limit.

Of course some of this would break the existing challenges, so these additional options and tools should only be available in the free mode. And with more customization in the free mode available, sharing your dungeons online and playing the dungeons of Zelda fans worldwide would automatically become more interesting. But the way it is right now, it's just a lot of missed potential.

The Chambers

There is currently a total of 193 chambers in the game, which includes 22 unlockable chambers, five amiibo-exclusive chambers and six "plus effects". So, that's 160 chambers that are coming straight from the dungeons, where for the most part the only difference are the stone doorways, which are always a visual indicator that you're inside the Chamber Dungeon.

Some of the chambers have been modified to make them work on their own or when entering them from all sides. But rarely anything was really modified heavily, so it's for the most part the rooms that you already know from the existing dungeons.

One of the more unique chambers.

In addition there are altered chambers, which all have to be unlocked. But for the most part this just offers new versions of existing chambers with a different number of exits, which is a little bit boring. However, this also includes variants of all boss chambers, which now can be placed anywhere in your dungeon, allowing you to build your own boss rush.

Speaking of, it's kind of a shame that none of the challenges actually force you to go through all bosses. Some of them make use of fixed boss rooms, but if you want a complete boss rush, you'll need to build your own. But at least you can, where almost all bosses and mini-bosses are available in some form.

Still, there are some rooms in the existing dungeons that could have been transformed into a chamber, but weren't. The most notable exceptions are the Dodongo Snakes room from Level 3 and anything from the game's finale. The latter is especially disappointing, since there is even a postgame available, where this could have been unlocked.

Also, it feels like a missed opportunity that there aren't many rooms that are exclusive to the Chamber Dungeon. They could have done all sorts of things here, even chambers with completely new enemies and bosses, but except for the few "special chambers", which are exclusive to amiibo, there isn't much to see here. Another missed opportunity.

Plus Effects

The plus effects are the only real way of modifying a chamber, where you can place the effect on top of it. Only one plus effect can be used per chamber and not every plus effect can be used everywhere. They are all optional and can make your life easier or harder, depending on the effect.

The "+Hearts" and "+Rupees" effects are of the helpful kind and let hearts and Rupees rain from the ceiling, respectively. You can only use them once per dungeon, however. The "+Bombs" effect, which lets exploding bombs drop from the ceiling, on the other hand can be used almost everywhere and it can both screw or help you, where it's quite useful against certain bosses and devilish in rooms with cracked floors.

The most interesting effect is probably "+Monsters". It doubles the existing number of normal foes in a chamber, which makes for a far more action-packed experience. This effect is so much fun, it's a shame that you actually can't get it before finishing the entire game. And it should have been the default for this game's Hero Mode.

There is also the "+Wallmaster" effect, where once you've entered a room with this effect, a Wallmaster keeps chasing you around the entire dungeon, except for boss chambers. This is interesting, because it triggers a dungeon-wide effect and also features an enemy, which originally didn't appear in Link's Awakening.

Sadly, that's already it, not counting the amiibo-exclusive "+Shadow Link" effect. There probably would have been a lot more potential for similar ideas, but GREZZO stopped with these few effects.

Chamber Stones

If the many Secret Seashells and Pieces of Heart in the remake still aren't enough for you, there are also 14 Chamber Stones to collect. But unlike the other collectibles you won't find these hidden somewhere in chests or the environment, where instead they are treated like the most valuable rewards for Koholint's different attractions, like the mini-games. Half of the Chamber Stones are simply purchased from the shop for 1280 Rupees each, so there's a lot to do with your cash in the remake.

Two of them unlock new plus effects, the best ones even, which is awesome, but all the others only give you modified chambers. And here's the problem: the Chamber Stones don't really feel all that rewarding, especially if you're not invested in the Chamber Dungeon.

If a player achieves a highscore in a mini-game and then only gets one of these stones, it must feel really underwhelming. That this might turn out to be an already existing mini-boss chamber with a different number of doors doesn't help either, where the Chamber Stones just don't cut it as the "ultimate reward".

Here it probably would have been better to put some of them inside dungeon chests instead, replacing some of the Rupees and maybe even those annoying Secret Medicines. This would have been thematically more fitting as well and make getting some of the dungeon chests more worthwhile.

amiibo

The Chamber Dungeon also serves as a hook for amiibo and with a total of 24 different amiibo of The Legend of Zelda characters "available" it's only natural that Nintendo might want to make use of them somehow. Compared to Breath of the Wild you won't be scanning them on a daily basis, however... In fact you will only need five of them to unlock everything, including the new Link's Awakening Link amiibo that was released together with the remake.

What they do is unlocking so called special chambers in a random order. You can use any five of the different Zelda amiibo for this, but you can't use the same one twice. And that's really it. You unlock them once and then you can put your amiibo back on your shelf. It's the simplest form of amiibo rewards there is and not really inspired, because with one exception there isn't anything that ties to the individual amiibo.

What's also a shame is that this is the only way of obtaining chambers with contents that aren't present in the game's dungeons, like some of other mini-boss encounters. This includes the Moblin Chief, the Armos Knight and the Ball and Chain Trooper.

However, there is so much more that could have been done with these special chambers. For example the Lanmola mini-boss is completely absent from the Chamber Dungeon and the official website speaks of a "Cracked Floor Chamber", which has been replaced with the "Winged Item Chamber"...

The only amiibo that gives you a unique reward is the new Link's Awakening Link amiibo, which unlocks the Shadow Link plus effect. This spawns a Shadow Link inside the chamber (once per dungeon), who then will keep re-appearing until you defeat him for some Rupees. This sounds pretty cool at first, but the fights feel really underwhelming when compared to the Shadow Links in A Link Between Worlds and Tri Force Heroes.

The main difference from the Nintendo 3DS games is that the Shadow Link doesn't use any items any longer and you can't use any of your items on him. So, it's just about blocking his sword attacks with your shield and striking when the time is right. And this makes these fights rather dull and not really worth the trouble.

Probably the best thing about amiibo right now is that it lets you store your dungeons onto them. The saving feature of the amiibo gets utilized rarely anyway (only the Wolf Link amiibo did this with the Cave of Shadows in Twilight Princess HD and of course the figure players in Super Smash Bros.), where currently this is your only way of sharing your Chamber Dungeon creations and transporting them to other save files.

This isn't a real replacement for online sharing, but certainly better than nothing. And even with online sharing in place you still might want to make use of them, e.g. to store your Rupee farming dungeon.

It also saves your current time record onto the amiibo, where others now can try to surpass it. But don't worry, there aren't any rewards locked behind beating records, so this is only for your own entertainment and completely optional.

Conclusion

With its fixed chambers, the challenges and its overall simplicity the Chamber Dungeon doesn't really strive at being a dungeon maker, but more of a dungeon puzzler. And this is where this feature fails at being either one, because most of the challenges aren't really that challenging and for the Chamber Dungeon to have any lasting appeal it lacks the necessary level of customization, as well as a way of sharing your creations online...

It is a fun way or re-arranging and re-experiencing the contents from the existing dungeons in Link's Awakening, but it also barely offers anything new and overall feels like a pond of missed opportunities. Let's hope that Nintendo and GREZZO might consider delivering a Chamber Dungeon Update for the game, fixing some of its shortcomings and adding new contents.

The Good:

• Fun dungeon play for in-between
• Re-arrange the game's dungeons as you please
• Keeps expanding after every conquered dungeon
• Nice way of replaying almost all bosses
• Simple to use interface
• You can save dungeons to your amiibo

The Bad:

• Lack of customization in the Chamber Dungeon's free mode
• No online sharing for your Chamber Dungeons
• Challenges are often too easy
• Uninspired use of amiibo unlockables
• Chamber Stones don't feel very rewarding
• Only few chambers with new contents
• No touch controls supported