Also on: Nintendo Switch
Publisher: Rokaplay
Developer: Firechick
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: yes
ESRB: E
Super Dungeon Maker is built around a simple – and incredibly appealing – idea: apply the principles of Super Mario Maker to 2D Zelda. That was the gist of the game’s Kickstarter pitch, and it was enough to not only get the game funded, but also to get a Switch port for it.
And, to the game’s credit, it’s what it delivers here. If you’ve ever wanted to create 2D dungeons to your heart’s content, you can do precisely that in Super Dungeon Maker. Switches and chests and monsters: they’re all available, and you can lay them out however you want.
What’s more, you can also check out the dungeons other people have created. While some aren’t that great and are kind of broken (case in point: I entered a room and promptly got stuck when my character happened to be standing on the spot where a block was also supposed to be), you can also see some impressive creativity. You can even find some of the Zelda-inspired levels that were probably the impetus for creating the game.
My problem with Super Dungeon Maker is that while there are some neat tools here, there isn’t much else. You get a few tutorial levels to start, and, again, you have access to community dungeons, but it’s not like you’re getting a proper game with a story on top of that. And, as someone who vastly preferred Super Mario Maker 2 to the original Mario Maker precisely because it offered a Story Mode on top of the create-a-level mode, I can’t say that this barebones approach appeals to me all that much. I certainly like the idea, but the execution feels like it’s missing a little something.
Still, I totally get the appeal of Super Dungeon Maker if you’re the kind of person who loves building their own game worlds. It never claims to be anything more than that, and there seems to be a solid community in place to help the game continue to grow. To me it feels like there’s still some work to be done on fleshing it out, but as it stands, there’s definitely some potential here.
Rokaplay provided us with a Super Dungeon Maker PC code for review purposes.