Before I started writing that little game demo way back in 2021, I knew exactly what kind of game I wanted to make. I learned a lot, threw out just about everything I’d made, and started fresh with the plan crystallized: to make a game evocative of the best Legend of Zelda titles. But I knew I had to step back and think about this. What really makes a Zelda game?
At first I thought I grasped this on an intuitive level. I mean, I’ve played through A Link to the Past at least ten times.1 For a proper throwback I knew I needed more than something that looked like Zelda or played like Zelda. In order for my game to not just be some reskin, I needed to identify and follow the same first principles that guided the Zelda designers themselves.
The thing about first principles is, intuition isn’t enough. It’s not enough to have played a ton of these games, and it’s not enough to love them. The games, their themes, and their central mechanics all need to be grokked. To start, I needed to codify my beliefs about what a Zelda-like game should be. Once written, these rules can be referenced when in doubt, rewritten when they no longer serve, or set aside for future consideration.
So, I started writing.
What are the Rules?
An early design sketch from Zelda. Dungeons and combat, though a central part of the series, are only that: a part.
To put it lightly, I’m not exactly the first person to tackle this subject. In my quest to define the criteria that makes a Zelda game, I read quite a few excellent articles on specific aspects of game design used. But, it felt like everything I read only examined something specific and easily repeatable: how to replicate the level design, how you might imitate progression through dungeons, and so on. They focused on individual mechanics, which I argue are the expression of the principles that drive a game’s design.
Nothing I read, outside of interviews with Miyamoto, really tried to talk about why we are drawn to Zelda games over and over again. You can imitate the aesthetic and the mechanics, but without knowing exactly how to synthesize them, the end product becomes something like Stranger Things.2 It might look like Zelda and walk like Zelda, but don’t let that fool you.
So what’s the connective tissue here? How do you marry the aesthetic, mechanical, and narrative all together into something that is tangibly Zelda-esque?
I spent a long time reading, thinking, and writing about this, and came up with just four of what I consider to be guiding principles. The first is very broad and may seem obvious, but is the single most important goal for which to aim.3 The other three follow from the first — but this doesn’t make them secondary; in fact, all four of these become pillars upon which the foundation of the game rests.
Fun makes you the hero, not the plot.
(Image: Master Sword by Orioto.)
The Master Sword rules because of what you can do with it, not because it’s a storied blade of virtue.
This might sound a little reductive, or at least obvious. But, it’s important to stress this point and I think a lot of games miss this mark. A big part of the appeal of Zelda is that it makes you feel like a hero. The story gives you a nudge in that direction, but it’s not the story alone that engenders the feeling. It’s fun that does it.
A sprawling overworld, dark dungeons, a princess/world/timeline that needs saving; these alone aren’t enough. No matter how well-written your dialog is, or how moving your cutscenese are, if you aren’t having fun while you traverse and overcome the obstacles set before you by the game, then you might as well be watching a movie. Movies are great, and can be empowering in their own way, but that’s not what these games are after. It’s player agency we want. Zelda offers you power through your choices.
The goal is to empower the player through the actions they choose while playing the game. Let their choices lead to heroic challenges with heroic conclusions. You give them these seemingly insurmountable challenges and an arsenal of tools with which to tackle them, and then leave them to their own devices. When the player comes out the other side of an encounter (dungeon, fight, puzzle, etc.)4 for the first time, they should feel like they synthesized and used all the knowledge they had gained unto that point and that the experience enriched them.
It’s easy, in a Zelda-like game, to make this literal. Dungeon encounters often use tricks that require some special item that you only obtained at the end of the last dungeon, or somewhere in between, making it feel novel. And at the end, you get a new item and more health, literally leaving stronger than when you came. (More on this later.)
That said, your adventure grows kind of stale without some kind of narrative to push you along. The point to remember is that the two don’t live in vacuums. They are inextricably linked; propped up by each other. The story informs the game mechanics and the game mechanics express the story in a literal sense. And in the best Zelda games, “narrative” in a certain sense is superseded by the gameplay.
The “Fun Formula”
Because it’s not enough to say, “just make it fun!” I want to share a formula. This expresses the delicate balance between choice and narrative in a game, and provides a concrete way to think about each. It also makes a nice segue into our next topic.
First, to reiterate: the player’s choice makes them a hero. They must choose this adventure. The corollary to that is that you need to design an adventure that is compelling and challenging. The adventure needs to draw in the player, at the same time empowering the player through their actions. Once combined, the effect propels the player through the game world.
We can look at it this way:
(Exploration + Combat) = Player's Story
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(Puzzles * Narrative * Quests) = Developer's Story
This is the balancing act every Zelda game pulls off, and the same one that makes imitators struggle. If these factors could actually be expressed numerically, we’d want the result to be greater than 1.
Leaning too hard on the Player’s Story can be detrimental, but won’t kill you, if your world is compelling enough (see Breath of the Wild for a Zelda example, or just about any roguelike for examples from other RPGs). Conversely, if you pull hard in the direction of the Developer’s Story, you risk losing the plot altogether. (How many times have you heard a gamer complain about fetch quests?)
So, how do we thread this needle? How do we ensure that everything remains fun and challenging and grounded in player choice without veering into Survival Game territory? How do we really capture that Zelda magic?
If “fun makes the hero” is the keystone, then what follows are the cornerstones, all of which are essential to make the final thing stand on its own.
Wrapping Up
In writing this post I’m trying to condense a notebook’s worth of notes into just a few thousand words. It’s taken much longer than I originally thought, so in the interest of actually publishing something and not holding off forever, I’ll be breaking this into parts. The next part will cover the Player’s Story, and the third part the Developer’s Story.
There’s also a tangentially-related “dungeon design tips” post in the works.
Stay tuned!
- Not a brag… I just get obsessive sometimes.
- I’m explicitly not calling out any game in particular here. I thought it would be easier to go the TV route since Capital N Nostalgia is kind of the rage these days.
- Note that it’s important for any game, not just Zelda. But the point stands.
- From here on, these are just ‘encounters’.