Since Super Mario Maker first hit the scene, people have eyed up Zelda as the next in line to potentially get some sort of dungeon-creation tool that players could play through and enjoy while sharing content with their friends and making challenges along the way. It seems that this idea isn’t fully coming to fruition anytime soon from Nintendo, but many others are stepping up and making their own attempts which includes the likes of Super Dungeon Maker, a most aptly-named title. The real question is does this dungeon creator manage to pull it off or did it not quite nail everything along the way?
There isn’t much of a story at all to speak about in Super Dungeon Maker but the protagonist is a chicken lad named Fink. He’s a young adventurer who wants to head out and explore various dungeons throughout the world and see what lies in store. He happens to live in a village filled to the brim with many other little birds who are more than ready to share their vast knowledge of dungeon creation with him. Right off the bat there’s a group of little budgies that want to learn to create and act as the main tutorial Fink will receive before players can hop right into their own creations. The only real flaw in the tutorial is some of the more complex elements aren’t touched upon in detail and some things, such as the activation numbers for tools, are unclear without some clear testing. There’s a lot of trial and error in creation which is natural in a creation tool, but it’d be nice if there was more ways for the title to guide through basic learning and understanding of these elements.
The creation element itself is streamlined and straightforward. At the start they’re given a blank room, a golden egg and all the tools at their disposal. The first and most obvious is the ground which comes in a variety of design options. Some floors are simply to change aesthetics while others will offer challenge such as holes, cracked floors that break, water or even quicksand. There are currently four different types of dungeons that can be chosen between and each one has unique floor gimmicks that can be used. It would be nice if some of these weren’t exclusive to certain dungeon styles, but for the most part they fit in well with the setting that’s been chosen. Next would be the door options which will be familiar for anyone who has played an overhead adventure title before. Straightforward doors, key doors, stairs and even cracked walls that need to be blown open to enter. There’s a good selection with lots to choose between. It’s also nice that stair doors instantly create another floor above or below them if available with a total of six floors that can be worked with. Terrain options let players craft design aesthetics such as torches, plants and blocks to keep Fink out of a certain direction. This includes a grass that can be cut to get rewards and even switches for more puzzle solving elements to be added.
The mechanical elements of Super Dungeon Maker take getting used to, but it all comes to correlating numbers to activation. Set down a switch and it will have a number assigned to it, which can then be connected to spawners or despawners with a variety of things that can be placed upon them. Sliding or pushed blocks can be used to activate a variety of things to create unique puzzles. This also includes fun invisible triggers that can activate in any part of a room to spawn. The enemy variety is solid, albeit there’s not any variety between the different dungeon types so all the enemies will be the same regardless of where the player is. The bosses are best simply described as Zelda bosses, as their archetypes are lifted either entirely from various Zelda titles throughout the years. It’s fitting given the clear Zelda inspiration in the title in general, but it would have been nice to see some more unique takes on bosses to choose from. These bosses also include the trigger numbers seen associated with switches but they have three, which is somewhat confusing and unclear on how they operate at first until a lot of trial and error really helps piece it all together. At the very least they function as bosses should and make for decent challenging fights to overcome through a dungeon.
If there’s one particular gripe that may go under the radar, it’s that the sound effects are painfully annoying. While building a level on the same floor as the golden egg needed to complete the dungeon, it’s constantly heard bouncing despite being in the building mode. There were also multiple moments of the sound seemingly glitching and becoming louder and quickly more obnoxious. Many enemies also just have the most ear-piercing sound effects. Despite the fact that these sounds do add immersion to exploring dungeons, there was no hesitation in also turning them off entirely to avoid having to listen to them anymore. Speaking of glitches and bugs, however, this title seems readily able to present them on a silver platter without much effort. In addition to a handful of unfortunate soft locks found in the dev-created levels, there are times when creating a level can glitch an entire small portion of a stage and leave that area unable to be built upon. In our experience it was blocks that were visually there but couldn’t be altered through normal means. These glitched blocks also appeared when playing the stage itself with inconsistent results as some would be solid and some would be passable. Regardless, though, they made the level look like a nightmare. The only way found to undo it was revert to a previous save, but if one hadn’t been done in some time there was progress to be potentially lost. One of the most minor additions we wish had been available is the ability to drag and drop entire rooms to different areas because as it stands if something is misplaced it needs to be entirely recreated in another area to move it.
Closing Comments:
Super Dungeon Maker is a wonderful but flawed creation experience so far. It’s painfully easy to lose time working on a dungeon for hours, crafting every little element to make things feel perfect and add little decorations as a finishing touch. The key downside are the current bugs and glitches that occur semi-frequently. While building is fantastic, it’s easy to glitch things accidentally and never be able to repair them which could hinder an entire creation in one fell swoop. There’s so much to love here that we hope it gets fixed so more can enjoy one of the best dungeon-building creators out there. For those on the fence it’s best to wait until more patches come around, but Super Dungeon Maker is a delight that we can’t wait to see fix its handful of problems and get to the meat of exploration creation.
Super Dungeon Maker
