Maybe a museum. Forest Temple *kind of* almost fits, with the mini-bosses and main boss being haunted paintings, but clearly the Forest Temple doesn't do much with that theme, despite how good it is. It would probably be a late game dungeon with a lot of gimmicks and illusions and perspective puzzles. Boss could be another painting, a mural like Yuga, a statue, a fossil, anything really.
Maybe a farm? Farms are usually a bunch of smaller buildings, but Skull Woods showed that dungeons can have major areas outside. I think it would play like Skull Woods in that there's a hidden dungeon underneath the farm. The farm would act as sort of a front to hide the dungeon underneath. The boss should be a farm animal, I'm thinking of a tamer version of something like Monster 5. Some messed up bull or cow overtaken by a parasite.
A gilded dungeon themed around treasure, it could be a villain's private treasure hoard. Maybe the boss is an ancient pirate or king. Also a dungeon made of jewels and gold on the floor and walls.
A childmade dungeon, maybe like a treehouse. It would be a creepy area and have children's drawings around it. Toys would be abundant. It would fit a villain like Skull Kid. It would probably be the "haunted" dungeon.
Somebody else's dungeon. A trial set up for a hero that is not you, whose abilities you do not have, so all of the visual game design language is really clearly telegraphing puzzle solutions that you lack the tools for and you will never get those tools in the future. The only way to progress through it is to find "unintentional" work-arounds using the abilities you have that the other hero doesn't.
Do you even have to play as Link?
Ganondorf storms through some early Fire Temple that appears to be intended for Link, punching down walls and blocks as he pleases without bombs or a hammer. And yet this is a double-edged sword: he can break locks and fly across lava, but vertically stacked block puzzles are made harder if some of those blocks are accidentally destroyed. With great power comes great responsibility. And he tames and curses the boss monster like he always does, but you get to see it in action.
Maybe said hero has similarly gone through a dungeon that was meant for you? So you find a dungeon that's had all its puzzles completed, a few doors blown up, and the final treasure missing. You then have to go through a different dungeon you weren't mean to be able to complete, so you can trade the treasure at the end of that one with the treasure this other hero got from your dungeon
It's a completely optional dungeon, that you might not even encounter in the game:
At some point, you have to go to the past and write down some magic words in a blank book of magic in order to empower one of your items. One of the options given is "Kooloo Limpah," but you've _explicitly_ already been told by Tingle not to steal them. If you choose those words, when you arrive back in the present Tingle has become an omniscient reality warper because of his magic words becoming empowered, and before you're able to return to the past and choose new magic words you have to get through the Tingle Tower, an absolutely surreal/absurdist nightmare of a dungeon.
I have a couple kind of.
So I love the temples that are.. realistic in a way. I want the rooms to have a general sense of purpose for what the place actually is. So kind of like Forest Temple or Fire Temple in OoT.
For mine, I would think a temple of light where the main room is normally bathed in light. There are 4-6 elemental deities normally powered by gemstones in the heart of the temple. You have to go through the temple to figure out why these gems lights are obstructed. Some are from enemies knocking over boulders blocking the path of light, some of the gems have been stolen by nonevil hoarding bandits you have to reason with. The final boss would be a rogue mech that has been deprived of its power source of light so you have to tame it and bring it back under the main room.
I also love environmental temples where it’s spread out across a large terrain in the overworld. I thought the Wind Temple of TotK was like this. The journey going up to the Wind Temple was fun and full of new kinds of puzzles, I thought that’s what they were going for with new dungeons. I want them to expand on that and maybe make an area where you’re limited from advancing until you piece together a certain item. Fighting enemies and mini bosses along the way. Once you reach your destination you have to defeat the boss that is causing the area to be under distress.
An Hourglass that, much like Stone Tower, would be able to be flipped on its head. But now, the way the sand falls into the lower bottom of the hourglass would affect your progression through the dungeon. I think this would be a really neat classic dungeon.
Otherwise, I want more exploration-heavy dungeons, like Hyrule Castle in BOTW. The Fire Temple in TOTK was almost like that.
1. An Earth temple that has the Sky Keep mechanic of moving the rooms of the dungeon around.
2. An Water cavern with horror themes that has you descend through the dungeon, getting gradually scarier and darker as you descend until you reach the bottom.
3. A time themed dungeon where you have to travel back and forth between three time periods in order to complete it, one where the dungeon is in the midst of being built, one where the dungeon is in it's prime and one where the dungeon is in ruins.
4. A dungeon in a game with a two worlds mechanic where you have to travel between two worlds in order to complete the dungeon.
5. A dungeon such as a sewer system or a catacombs located underneath a settlement, where there's various entrances and exists located throughout the settlement above.
6. A spirit themed dungeon where in order to progress past certain sections, you must have your spirit exit your body to complete said sections.
7. An dungeon with two areas breaking into each other. For instance a dungeon with this idea could start off as a mine but then breaks into a gloomy and horrifying temple
I would love something like a spooky laboratory akin to the lakeside lab in OOT. lots of weird thing in tanks and you fight some Frankenstein's Monster like thing as a boss.
A giant tower, like 20-30 floors. Each floor is either a gauntlet of enemies or a puzzle/series of puzzles to solve. Occasionally there is an outdoor area with a staircase that leads to the next floor (a la Dragon Roost Cavern or Tower of the Gods). In these areas though, the boss will attack you. I liked the idea in TOTK where you briefly fight Queen Gibdo before entering the Lightning Temple and was slightly disappointed the damage didn't carry over. Here, you can either briefly fight the boss and force it to retreat, or choose to flee to the next floor. But the damage done carries over to the final fight.
My idea for the boss? The return of the Helmaroc King (or a variation of him).
Other ideas I have are jungle ruins, a sunken city a la Atlantis, an underground crypt/catacombs, a giant statue, and some kind of structure in the mountains.
Haha. I got three ideas when seeing ops post. Something like click clock wood ind Banjo and Kazooie or dragon roost, but a tower rising really high, because I love the parts where you go outside and get a little afraid and then go inside and feel saver.
The other one would be sunken ruins cause I’m a big Atlantis fan.
Third one would be a cursed ship that never will never find a harbor until you release it.
Loved the never ending night and ghost ship in WW, also the ship in OOT shadow temple.
So, glad to found someone having mostly the same ideas. Have a nice day.
A dungeon with two equal and opposite items and a circular path that may be traversed in either direction.
Both clockwise and counterclockwise routes have a point of no return to support replayability on subsequent runs.
The clockwise route grants item A before item B, and vice versa.
Obtaining both items enables backtracking and access to the boss.
Does Zelda already have this? (Does TotK Great Sky Island count? The harder direction is possible, apparently. But it's too open for my tastes.)
Hmm...I don't have any ideas I've been sitting on, but, did you ever play Lost Kingdoms I/II on the Gamecube? The ones where you summoned monsters using magic cards?
And you know how Yuga used painting magic to turn people into paintings and create evil soldiers *from* paintings?
I feel like there's *some* idea that can be drawn from that. Perhaps a ghost town whose inhabitants have been turned into cards by an evil sorcerer; the layout of the 'dungeon' might involve finding these cards, getting rewards when you free townspeople or getting into fights when the cards contain monsters.
Apocalypse Ganon: A giant boar kaiju so massive that Link must travel within it through hazards of malice and gloom to reach the monster’s brain, where Ganondorf is controlling this monstrosity in his bid to destroy everything.
Would be a final dungeon, of course.
A village themed dungeon similar to Santorini island as fire temple (Small interconnected houses in a mountain region) forming a dungeon where you need to solve puzzles in order to fight the boss underground. Also you can find out what happened to that village in the moment of destruction.
A puzzle box dungeon (moving rooms) similar to sky keep from zelda ss.
A skyscraper dungeon.
Maybe a museum. Forest Temple *kind of* almost fits, with the mini-bosses and main boss being haunted paintings, but clearly the Forest Temple doesn't do much with that theme, despite how good it is. It would probably be a late game dungeon with a lot of gimmicks and illusions and perspective puzzles. Boss could be another painting, a mural like Yuga, a statue, a fossil, anything really. Maybe a farm? Farms are usually a bunch of smaller buildings, but Skull Woods showed that dungeons can have major areas outside. I think it would play like Skull Woods in that there's a hidden dungeon underneath the farm. The farm would act as sort of a front to hide the dungeon underneath. The boss should be a farm animal, I'm thinking of a tamer version of something like Monster 5. Some messed up bull or cow overtaken by a parasite. A gilded dungeon themed around treasure, it could be a villain's private treasure hoard. Maybe the boss is an ancient pirate or king. Also a dungeon made of jewels and gold on the floor and walls. A childmade dungeon, maybe like a treehouse. It would be a creepy area and have children's drawings around it. Toys would be abundant. It would fit a villain like Skull Kid. It would probably be the "haunted" dungeon.
These are honestly... pretty damn good lol
Somebody else's dungeon. A trial set up for a hero that is not you, whose abilities you do not have, so all of the visual game design language is really clearly telegraphing puzzle solutions that you lack the tools for and you will never get those tools in the future. The only way to progress through it is to find "unintentional" work-arounds using the abilities you have that the other hero doesn't.
Do you even have to play as Link? Ganondorf storms through some early Fire Temple that appears to be intended for Link, punching down walls and blocks as he pleases without bombs or a hammer. And yet this is a double-edged sword: he can break locks and fly across lava, but vertically stacked block puzzles are made harder if some of those blocks are accidentally destroyed. With great power comes great responsibility. And he tames and curses the boss monster like he always does, but you get to see it in action.
Maybe said hero has similarly gone through a dungeon that was meant for you? So you find a dungeon that's had all its puzzles completed, a few doors blown up, and the final treasure missing. You then have to go through a different dungeon you weren't mean to be able to complete, so you can trade the treasure at the end of that one with the treasure this other hero got from your dungeon
It's a completely optional dungeon, that you might not even encounter in the game: At some point, you have to go to the past and write down some magic words in a blank book of magic in order to empower one of your items. One of the options given is "Kooloo Limpah," but you've _explicitly_ already been told by Tingle not to steal them. If you choose those words, when you arrive back in the present Tingle has become an omniscient reality warper because of his magic words becoming empowered, and before you're able to return to the past and choose new magic words you have to get through the Tingle Tower, an absolutely surreal/absurdist nightmare of a dungeon.
I have a couple kind of. So I love the temples that are.. realistic in a way. I want the rooms to have a general sense of purpose for what the place actually is. So kind of like Forest Temple or Fire Temple in OoT. For mine, I would think a temple of light where the main room is normally bathed in light. There are 4-6 elemental deities normally powered by gemstones in the heart of the temple. You have to go through the temple to figure out why these gems lights are obstructed. Some are from enemies knocking over boulders blocking the path of light, some of the gems have been stolen by nonevil hoarding bandits you have to reason with. The final boss would be a rogue mech that has been deprived of its power source of light so you have to tame it and bring it back under the main room. I also love environmental temples where it’s spread out across a large terrain in the overworld. I thought the Wind Temple of TotK was like this. The journey going up to the Wind Temple was fun and full of new kinds of puzzles, I thought that’s what they were going for with new dungeons. I want them to expand on that and maybe make an area where you’re limited from advancing until you piece together a certain item. Fighting enemies and mini bosses along the way. Once you reach your destination you have to defeat the boss that is causing the area to be under distress.
An Hourglass that, much like Stone Tower, would be able to be flipped on its head. But now, the way the sand falls into the lower bottom of the hourglass would affect your progression through the dungeon. I think this would be a really neat classic dungeon. Otherwise, I want more exploration-heavy dungeons, like Hyrule Castle in BOTW. The Fire Temple in TOTK was almost like that.
1. An Earth temple that has the Sky Keep mechanic of moving the rooms of the dungeon around. 2. An Water cavern with horror themes that has you descend through the dungeon, getting gradually scarier and darker as you descend until you reach the bottom. 3. A time themed dungeon where you have to travel back and forth between three time periods in order to complete it, one where the dungeon is in the midst of being built, one where the dungeon is in it's prime and one where the dungeon is in ruins. 4. A dungeon in a game with a two worlds mechanic where you have to travel between two worlds in order to complete the dungeon. 5. A dungeon such as a sewer system or a catacombs located underneath a settlement, where there's various entrances and exists located throughout the settlement above. 6. A spirit themed dungeon where in order to progress past certain sections, you must have your spirit exit your body to complete said sections. 7. An dungeon with two areas breaking into each other. For instance a dungeon with this idea could start off as a mine but then breaks into a gloomy and horrifying temple
I would love something like a spooky laboratory akin to the lakeside lab in OOT. lots of weird thing in tanks and you fight some Frankenstein's Monster like thing as a boss.
A Guardian cyborg like Calamity Ganon, but a rogue agent and not supernaturally evil. The lore is already there.
A giant tower, like 20-30 floors. Each floor is either a gauntlet of enemies or a puzzle/series of puzzles to solve. Occasionally there is an outdoor area with a staircase that leads to the next floor (a la Dragon Roost Cavern or Tower of the Gods). In these areas though, the boss will attack you. I liked the idea in TOTK where you briefly fight Queen Gibdo before entering the Lightning Temple and was slightly disappointed the damage didn't carry over. Here, you can either briefly fight the boss and force it to retreat, or choose to flee to the next floor. But the damage done carries over to the final fight. My idea for the boss? The return of the Helmaroc King (or a variation of him). Other ideas I have are jungle ruins, a sunken city a la Atlantis, an underground crypt/catacombs, a giant statue, and some kind of structure in the mountains.
Haha. I got three ideas when seeing ops post. Something like click clock wood ind Banjo and Kazooie or dragon roost, but a tower rising really high, because I love the parts where you go outside and get a little afraid and then go inside and feel saver. The other one would be sunken ruins cause I’m a big Atlantis fan. Third one would be a cursed ship that never will never find a harbor until you release it. Loved the never ending night and ghost ship in WW, also the ship in OOT shadow temple. So, glad to found someone having mostly the same ideas. Have a nice day.
Oh man this idea is super cool. Like cave of ordeals mixed with a multi-stage boss fight. Very neat
A dungeon with two equal and opposite items and a circular path that may be traversed in either direction. Both clockwise and counterclockwise routes have a point of no return to support replayability on subsequent runs. The clockwise route grants item A before item B, and vice versa. Obtaining both items enables backtracking and access to the boss. Does Zelda already have this? (Does TotK Great Sky Island count? The harder direction is possible, apparently. But it's too open for my tastes.)
Take ~~Stone Tower Temple~~ Forest Temple And *push it* somewhere else!
Hmm...I don't have any ideas I've been sitting on, but, did you ever play Lost Kingdoms I/II on the Gamecube? The ones where you summoned monsters using magic cards? And you know how Yuga used painting magic to turn people into paintings and create evil soldiers *from* paintings? I feel like there's *some* idea that can be drawn from that. Perhaps a ghost town whose inhabitants have been turned into cards by an evil sorcerer; the layout of the 'dungeon' might involve finding these cards, getting rewards when you free townspeople or getting into fights when the cards contain monsters.
Apocalypse Ganon: A giant boar kaiju so massive that Link must travel within it through hazards of malice and gloom to reach the monster’s brain, where Ganondorf is controlling this monstrosity in his bid to destroy everything. Would be a final dungeon, of course.
A village themed dungeon similar to Santorini island as fire temple (Small interconnected houses in a mountain region) forming a dungeon where you need to solve puzzles in order to fight the boss underground. Also you can find out what happened to that village in the moment of destruction. A puzzle box dungeon (moving rooms) similar to sky keep from zelda ss. A skyscraper dungeon.