Developer: FIRECHICK, rokaplay
Publisher: FIRECHICK, rokaplay
Platform: PC, Switch
Tested on: PC
Super Dungeon Maker – Review
Since the release of Super Mario Maker, the world has been waiting for other Nintendo franchises to receive their own ‘Maker’ game. The Legend of Zelda Maker would be a great contender to hog the spotlight from fan-made Super Mario adventures, but sadly, up to this day, we haven’t been blessed with such a title. Now, however, we are treated to the next best thing with Super Dungeon Maker, a game that allows you to build your own small retro-inspired dungeons that look very similar to the dungeons in A Link to the Past. Whilst the game clearly took its inspiration from Nintendo’s beloved Zelda series, it does its best to create its own identity.
Story
Even though the game would have been rather interesting to have an overarching story, Super Dungeon Maker has no story value whatsoever. We feel like this is a shame, as the colorful characters that inhabit the world look quite interesting, and we loved the game’s protagonist, Fink. As the game is still receiving a lot of updates, we do hope that perhaps a short story mode is added to the mix.
Graphics
Graphically, Super Dungeon Maker is a very pretty game. The game has a decent variation when it comes to its assets, characters, and enemies. Nonetheless, after playing through a few dungeons, you’ll probably have seen all the game has to offer. We again hope that a few more enemies and assets are added to the mix as the game gains more popularity. That being said, the overall animations look good, and the SNES-like graphics have a lot of charm. We found the character movements to be very fluid as well.
Sound
The sound design isn’t too bad, and the soundtrack honors the retro visuals of the game. While the tracks aren’t overly memorable, they are decent enough to never get too dull or annoying. The sound effects also provide decent feedback, but once again, these are nothing to write home about.
Gameplay
Super Dungeon Maker, as the name may imply, is a game that revolves around creating your own dungeons and playing those that the community has made and uploaded. The offset is rather straightforward, as you either spend your time with the aforementioned two options. Inside the dungeons or when exploring the small overworld, the game plays like an old-school Zelda game, where you have a few tools at your disposal to best your enemies or solve puzzles.
When actually diving into the creative aspect of the game, you’ll notice that you have a set of options at your disposal, ranging from regular design options to more elaborate features such as monster spawns, levers and switches, and other puzzle designs. It does take a while before you get the hang of the controls, and we actually preferred swapping between two control schemes to ‘play’ the game. When we were exploring our own dungeons or those made by other players, we mainly played with a controller. When we were feeling creative, however, we opted for a mouse and keyboard setup, as this made designing our dungeon(s) so much easier. The menus are fairly intuitive, but you’ll need to tinker around with some items first to truly understand how they work.
Even though the game is doing its job, the content is rather limited, and you’ll have seen what it has to offer rather quickly. There is luckily enough player-generated content to keep you entertained for a while, and delving into creating some interesting dungeons yourself will also keep you occupied for a while, but we still feel like what’s on offer here is very finite. We do hope a few more original mechanics are added in the future, as well as a story mode to tie everything together. It would simply already be nice to have a bit of actual progress, where you have to achieve certain goals to unlock even more content.
Conclusion
Super Dungeon Maker is a fun little game for those wanting a Zelda Maker game. We found the overall experience to be straightforward, but it did take us a while to truly master the more intricate design options when building our own small dungeon. At this point in time, we do find that the game could use a bit more content and perhaps a short dedicated story mode to flesh out the rather adorable characters of this world. Nonetheless, if you’re a creative person or want to play through short Zelda-like dungeons, this one is still worth checking out.
Super Dungeon Maker - Review,
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