Just finished this in around 3 hours and a half or so and it was a pretty nice quest to play. This is easily a big improvement over your other works so good job with that! There were quite a lot of cool things you had going with the quest, though with a few minor downsides in a couple places. To start with the positives, I definitely like how the world is designed, there's plenty of nice detail in a lot of places and each area had quite a bit of variety involved. I didn't really spot any tile errors of any kind so good job with that. The difficulty balance in general was pretty good, and things were generally balanced nicely. I'm not sure if I missed a red tunic or something, but I didn't seem to find it anywhere. The dungeon flow was generally good and I felt like the later dungeons were much stronger than the earlier dungeons (Level 8 had a really cool concept, for example), but they were all pretty good anyway. I also like the random funny lines of dialogue I found when playing the quest. The existential crisis moblin was amazing.

There were a few things that kinda brought down the experience a little, nothing too major for the most part, though there was one kind of big thing that I will point out a bit later. To begin with, while the dungeons were nicely made, I do feel like they might be a little monochromatic at times (as Shane said). Just changing the torch colours to red and water tiles to blue can make quite a bit of a difference and would make things look less samey colour-wise. Again, it's not a big thing, but something to consider I suppose. Another thing is the fact that you can clip into objects and stuff in dungeons, because of the way NES dungeons work in ZC. I know the quest has been updated to fix this, but I still managed to find a couple spots where I got stuck into blocks and stuff (you can look through those elsewhere). I would suggest to try and look back through each dungeon, and carefully see where you would end up by walking from one screen to another and get rid of anything that is 3 blocks in towards the centre of the screen from each side.

Like I said earlier, difficulty in general wasn't an issue, but a minor thing I found is that I found Level 7 to be harder than Level 8, which seems a bit odd. I'd probably swap out the splitting Darknuts and put them in Level 8 instead of 7, since I noticed enemies kinda had a downgrade in Level 8. Just a simple change like that should make things be more balanced. On the topic of Level 7, the one major thing I was taking about is the fact that I managed to break the dungeon completely by jumping straight into the boss from the start. I followed the path from the entrance to the room with the hookshot pegs on both sides, and went for the right path (there was no way back, so you should probably add something to go back). I followed that and since I had enough keys I somehow ended up at the boss room. I imagine there was supposed to be a boss door? Seeing how you jump straight into Level 8 after, I went back to 7 and went to the left path and got the boss key, though it's useless now. I found it strange that Level 7 didn't seem to have a dungeon item of any kind. Maybe I just didn't see it but I couldn't find it anywhere. Another thing to point out is the lack of shortcuts or fast travel later in the quest. I noticed things got a little linear which isn't bad, but it would be nice if there were some warp tiles or caves connecting up later areas together to allow for a bit of faster travel rather than having to go through all the areas again to reach one point. It's not too big of a deal, but going back for heart pieces and stuff is a little tedious because of that. One last thing, I kinda felt like the ending got rushed a little in terms of heart pieces, but maybe that's just me. Placing 4 heart pieces so close to each other like that was a little eh to me. Maybe hiding them in other places that were used as dead ends or something in the main overworld could have been better.

Overall though, I definitely did enjoy this quest. There are a couple issues here and there, but it is still a very solid effort IMO. I'll give this one a solid 4/5, and I'm looking forward to any more future stuff you make!

I gave this quest a go and it's safe to say so far this is my favorite quest of this year. While not perfect, it genuinely entertained me and had a lot of modest effort and care put into it. The quest in nature didn't take itself too seriously and that was a good choice as the goofy lines got a chuckle or two out of me and made the experience all the more enjoyable. Some music choices, while some are far from original, were still good and managed to fit the area nicely. The overworld and dungeons were designed very nicely, especially the towns, those areas were pretty unique to explore in.

I think some of my issues are minor but do add up: My biggest is the stepladder. This doesn't work perfectly with diagonal scrolling and it has lead to some of the bugs I have pointed out on our private Discord chat. NES dungeon type rooms have caused some clipping into solid objects - I'd invest checking those rooms as "interior" via screen data. Some dungeons felt more monochromatic than others. I think my biggest issue with it was distinguishing water and floor in Level 2 and ice and water in Ice Tunnels.

Some suggestions for your next quest be it Another Land 3 or something original: Give shortcuts to boss rooms, especially if they're far away and require a lot of shutters to get through. Maybe give some cutscenes after Triforce pieces to let the player know where to go or at least get some vague idea like in the Gameboy Zeldas. Replace stepladder with the feather or disable diagonal walking. Apply at least two colours to every dungeon (and give water its own colour!) and make sure to not place objects in places where the player might get stuck or escape the screen in unintended ways. Make sure keys are placed more thoughtfully as some felt like they were just handed out the moment you noticed a lock door (usually you want to be more creative than that!) and add just a bit more logic to raft puzzles although I do appreciate you gave some visual cues, they just didn't make too much sense from a logical perspective was all. Some optional secrets weren't conveyed too well either (bombable wall to get to the Level 2 shield was the biggest example).

Overall, I recommend this quest if you're looking for a competent and well done 2018 quest. It's my personal favorite for this year so far.

gonna play right now!

This looks so fun! Downloading and playing tomorrow for sure.