138 replies to this topic

[Deedee]

Red/Blue Dungeon:

Imagine a dungeon where instead of hitting blue or red crystal switches to lower or raise blue and red blocks, you hit blue or red crystals to change the theme of the dungeon within an instant. From a lava-filled fiery dungeon to a frozen icy one.

 

Oh, so you mean Prismatic Gate from Isle of Rebirth? Shane, why are you trying to have people copy Gameboy games?

Mirror World Dungeon:

 

2 floors. Mirrors everywhere. Walk in a mirror, end up in the mirror world  on the opposite side of the screen the mirror was located before. For bonus points, have light travel through these mirrors like portals.

[grayswandir]

Hypercube:
 Your dungeon has no borders, but multiple floors. For each floor, if you move through the eastern edge of your dungeon map you come out of the west, and vice versa. Destroy players' sense of dungeoneering with this simple trick! Architects hate it!

That sounds really, really fun, if you do it right. As a variant, you could get rid of the looping, but have more than 3 dimensions - which would essentially be different colored staircases, I guess. So you have east/west and north/south as normal movement, up/down as normal staircases, and then more pairs of additional staircases that moved you along a different axis.

Also, it's hard to do in the default view, but with sideview you could probably get some escher style stuff going.

[Shane]

Oh, so you mean Prismatic Gate from Isle of Rebirth? Shane, why are you trying to have people copy Gameboy games?

Nah, I imagined the dungeon on a whim. If you want to get far more creative than that then, have a reason why it goes from hot to cold in a matter of seconds. Maybe the dungeon could raise and lower itself inside a volcano with a frozen surface. Maybe even take advantage of that by having more content outside the dungeon itself. For example, when lowered and hot, you can explore inside the volcano's tunnels. Maybe when raised, you can go outside on the volcano's surface and such. I would be utterly amazed to know if I'm getting people to copy an existing dungeon now.

 

Plus I had three more dungeon ideas that were far more creative below that anyway.

[Dark Ice Dragon]

i'm thinking to something like this ...the game will not finish immediatly after the last boss, for complete the game you must return to an area you already saw ( maybe the first village or a small ruin you saw in the game ), destroy a obstacle whit the master sword ( dropped by the last boss ) and access to a small new area where there will be the ending

[Darkmatt]

God I just thought of something even more nefarious than Hypercube.

 

The Lens of Truth is Invisible: Okay so get this, item that allows you to find secrets and see invisible stuff? What if it in itself was invisible? To mechanically explain, you would: see nothing lying on the ground, pick up nothing, and have nothing in your inventory. This would only change if you bite the bullet and use the mystery object in your inventory, which will allow you to see invisible, and in turn, allow you to see the Lens of Truth. For convenience you would see the Lens of Truth from now on once you use it once, but just think: what if you can make your player paranoid over mystery item X? What if you can convince him it's bad and he shouldn't use it? What if you condition your player with another invisible item that is literally a zonk prize and using it hinders him in some way?

 

Mind games, son.

[Avaro]

These are some dungeon ideas and gimmicks.

 

Temple of Memories

 

Upon entering this dungeon, the player will think he mistakenly entered an earlier dungeon he already completed. The first few screens should be exactly identical to an earlier dungeon and it's already completed. You have to travel to a certain point in it that you should have remembered when you first went through the dungeon and then the temple shows its true nature.................... That's all I got. I can't finalize this idea

 

Special types of jinxes

 

Have multiple differently coloured permanent jinx effects as a gimmick in a dungeon or a cave. There will be bubble enemies or there could be bubble tiles that give you their jinx effect when you step on the tile. The jinx effects don't combine, so getting a different jinx overrides the current one. The player will be forced to work around the different effects. Here are some ideas.

 

Purple: Stops you from using any items.

Blue: Makes you walk slower. It can be used to make it harder to fight enemies that you have to defeat to progress. You could also prevent the player from walking against conveyors, so that they are one way only, if the player is slow.
Green: Makes you weak and light. You can't push blocks or step on triggers but you can walk over crumbling floor without breaking the floor. You also do reduced damage.
White: Gets rid of jinx effects.

 

Cave of Thieves

 

Oh no, thieves have stolen your important items! Go to their cave and get your items back. It's like crescent island from Oracle of Ages, but it's an entire dungeon based around that gimmick.

 

Sky dungeon falls down

 

You could have a dungeon that floats in the sky and after a certain point you can make it fall down to the land below, like Angel Island in Sonic Adventure or Skyloft from Skyward Sword. It will be impossible to make it feel realistic, especially if you have Link inside the dungeon when it's falling down. Realism doesn't always matter though.

 

There should be a crater or something like that as an inaccessible area on the overworld where the dungeon will be after it has fallen down. The impact will turn the dungeon into ruins, so that some doors and barriers are broken apart, the ceiling is broken apart and has fallen down, creating new barriers, statues are broken and crumbles are everywhere. Also, push blocks are in different places here and there, making puzzles solvable that were unsolvable before.

Edited by Avataro, 26 February 2016 - 08:16 PM.

[EJSnowden]

I've got a few that I want to try out, eventually.

A dungeon in the shape of a rubik's cube. Like the final dungeon of SS, but multiplied over three floors. To be doable in 2d, the middle floor is composed of sideview rooms, and changing the layout also flips the sideview rooms upside down. Swapping the top and bottom floors changes what gravity can pull down, or rearranges machinery.

 

Trying to think of an original, creative idea for a fire dungeon. There's only so many variations- generic fire temple, industrial factory, mine, volcano- and they tend to get boring. Then a Samurai Jack episode gave me a fantastic idea- we have a watery fish-belly dungeon, what about a fiery dragon belly dungeon? Combine high temperatures and lava with pulsing organs, bones, and other detritus the dragon has consumed.

 

Arbiter's Grounds redux, the undead desert dungeon based around an execution ground. Expand that idea- have a court room with giant scales, and a playthough of the dungeon is themed after a murder trial. You have to gather "witnesses" and "evidence" to weigh the scale in your favor.

[kurt91]

I've been playing Final Fantasy Record Keeper lately. The "pace yourself" mechanic is called Stamina, and entering a level requires you to have the correct amount of Stamina beforehand.

 

That got me thinking, what about a Stamina system in a ZC quest. You start the game at Link's house, and you have 10 Stamina. You lose 1 Stamina every screen transition. Changing screens with zero Stamina means Link is overexerting himself, and you lose half your current HP per screen transition. Returning to Link's house let's you rest in his bed and regain full Stamina. Scattered around the overworld are special items that increase your maximum Stamina by 1.

 

Progress in the quest relies on accumulating enough max Stamina to travel farther distances. Eventually, you can reach a town where you can pay money at an Inn. You now have full Stamina, and you're already a decent distance from Link's house, allowing you to travel much further distances. However, now you have to make sure you can stock enough cash to continue using the Inn as "home base". Run out of cash, and you may need to go back and continue using Link's house as "home base" since you can rest for free. You could also buy food items at a store, so you can replenish something like 5 Stamina by eating a sandwich.

 

Yes, it's great that you found a dungeon, but is Link in good enough physical shape to enter and make any real progress? Maybe you should poke your head in, see if there's anything you can accomplish for now, leave to rest up, and then return and see if the puzzles you already solved will let you explore further since you no longer have to enter the rooms that the puzzles were in.

[grayswandir]

I was thinking of a vaguely similar mechanism using hearts - that is, damage you've taken. Make it so that nothing drops hearts - enemies, grass, whatever, there's no way to find them. Instead, at home and certain other places, you can fill your reserve of "backup hearts". Your health will quickly refill from backup hearts on any screen without enemies (including once you've killed them all.) So you have a short-term "this many hearts per battle", and a long-term "this many hearts per trip."

 

You could work the stamina mechanic into this - just add a cost in backup hearts to screen transitions. So, once you've run out of "stamina", there's no direct damage, but you are no longer capable of healing.

[KOManiacJim]

"Wah ha ha ha!" These Ideas are in my head for my project.

 

A Greedy Protagonist

A Wario to Link's Mario is not really original, but it can give a breath of fresh air to the tried and true formula. Instead of being a noble hero, you are a gluttonous ("Oh Yeah!"), greedy ("Mineminemineminemine!"), rude (*Insert loud belch here*) and self serving threat ("WAH HA HA HA!") to both the heroes and villains of Hyurle. ("Oh great. Him of all people!")

 

Banking system like that of "Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3"

Along with the greedy protagonist, his greed is his primary motivation. After each dungeon and each section of the overworld, A glorified "Money Making Game" can be played to boost your earnings. The more risk in the game, the greater the multiplier to your rupees. But however, choosing wrong will divide the multiple of rupees. Afterwards, your earnings will be tallied into a bank where they will be kept until the end of the quest. If you die, you will lose a large sum of rupees along with all of your treasures collected being taken away and put back into their original spots.

 

Items organized as "Powers," "Keys" and "Treasure"

you know about the usual Zelda Items Link can use? Any protagonist can use those items as well. But I'd like to organize them by three categories: Powers, Keys, and Treasure. Two types of Powers exist. Permanent Powers (which our hero can keep no matter what happens like the boomerang, bow and arrows, bombs, rods, torches... you know, anything that can be used as items) and Temporary Powers (which will stay with you until the time limit runs out. Think attack boosts, defense boosts, speed boosts, flying modifier... you get the idea.) Keys are items needed to open paths in the overworlds and the dungeons (Be it a piece of meat, a letter needed to get potions, a few choice words, you get the picture.) Then there are treasures. Treasures are high rupee value items that will be kept until you die, in which they will be taken back to their original location. Say you found a Viking Helmet in dungeon 1-1. If you died, the Viking Helmet will be taken back to it's hidden room until you come back for it again. Treasures will be accounted for at the end of the quest when you are buying that castle.

Edited by KOManiacJim, 10 April 2016 - 06:41 PM.

[idontknow8]

I had an idea for an item drop - well, two actually:

 

I call it a "Power Skull."  Make two new items, one's a "Kill all enemies" item, the other is a "heart" type item but with a value of -999.  (Note the negative value).  Make the two have identical graphics (in this case a skull) and make a drop set with these two items with the same chance % and then lastly create (or edit) enemies that drop said items.

 

So essentially what happens is you kill an enemy, it drops a skull-looking item.  When you pick it up, it either instantly kills you or instantly kills all other enemies.  Do you take the risk and pick it up?  Or do you let it disappear?

 

You could also edit the % in the drop sets so it drops the kill all enemies item more often but still a chance of killing you, instead of 50/50.  You could also edit the negative value for the "heart" kind and make it do several hearts worth of damage instead of an instant-kill (one heart = a value of 16).

[Matthew]

I've had couple of interesting dungeon ideas. Here they are:

 

Chromatic Temple

This is an idea I wanted to implement in Tale of Lyria, but I didn't do it due to space constraints, and due to it being very hard to pull off. Basically, the whole idea here is that there are 3 rooms, each one containing a crystal that is either green, blue, or red. What you would do is go and activate one of the crystals with a magic wand, which would energize crystals of the same color throughout the dungeon. The blue crystals would become water when energized, the red crystals would become lava when energized, the green crystals would become tornadoes when energized, and these would lift Link up to the above floor. After exploring the dungeon with each crystal energized, Link could reach the end.

 

Black Labyrinth

This is something I'm doing in Outlands: DX. Basically, this dungeon is a large, dark-themed dungeon, and the way to the triforce is simply a few screens ahead of the entrance. The thing is, there would be several subsequent maze paths in order to reach the boss room, and the maze path would be given to the player in pieces by visiting several parts of the dungeon. A way to prevent the player from brute forcing the dugeon would be to have the boss key also obtained by dungeon exploration.

 

Temple of Eternity

Making use of the player's instrument, this dungeon would have Link travelling through a past, present, and future version of the dungeon in order to reach certain parts of it. For example, the player would explore the dungeon in the present to reach the triforce. In the past, it hasn't been hidden there yet, and in the future, you already would have taken in. In the past, the player can reach certain areas rendered unreachable due to the flow of time. In the future, Link can blow up certain cracked walls that were once sturdy in the present and past. In the present, Link can do things to imapct the future of the dungeon.

[Orithan]

Blessings of the Gods

 

Replacing most of your passive equipment and perhaps some active abilities and the Triforce Pieces, these are special powers you obtain by being blessed by higher forces. These can be anything, but a Zelda-themed setting would use blessings based off the Triforce (Faore, Din, Nayru) and/or the elements (eg. Seven Sages, the Guardians). Another option would be to allow which abilities to enable or disable based off a point-based system.

Edited by Orithan, 17 April 2016 - 10:34 PM.

[Dark Ice Dragon]

i'm testing this, some foes may be hurt only by the sword's beam and are immune to the blade, and for others is the opposite, weak to the blade immune to beam

[kurt91]

Legend of Zelda - Arcade Mode

 

Since we have a Subscreen Timer, I'm going to assume that scripts can access the total play time of a quest. If not, I'm sure a single-session designed version can be put together.

 

The game has a pre-set time limit per playthrough, let's say three hours max. Every enemy has a point value assigned to it, with more difficult enemies being worth more points. Play through like normal, but the goal isn't quite to beat the game. Once you hit that time limit, the game ends and you go to a screen to display your score and a password. Take a screenshot of your score and post it to the corresponding topic on this site. If you feel that somebody on the site is lying with a Photoshop-ed screen for whatever reason, starting the quest allows you the option to input the password found on the score screen. If the password corresponds with the matching score, you get a message saying it's legit. If the password doesn't match, the game will let you know that the other person isn't being entirely truthful.

 

Now we have a variety of potential strategies. Do you pick a route circling the overworld that gives you a constantly respawning supply of low-score easy-to-kill enemies for a slow steady high score? Do you instead forge ahead to the more dangerous areas as quick as possible, risking an early death and resulting low score for the potential of a quick boost to your score? Do you skip the dungeons and stick to the overworld for a constant stream of points, or do you play through the dungeons to get single-time score boosts for killing bosses?