After Super Mario Maker, you’d think Nintendo would give its other retro franchises a similar DIY treatment. Since the Japanese company hasn’t, other game developers are filling the void instead. So far, that’s mostly meant 2D creation suites that allow players to craft The Legend of Zelda levels with a Super NES aesthetic. But at least one developer is pushing the idea into the 3D era.
Temple Maker 64 is the work of Akela-morse, a solo game developer who left his job a year and a half ago to focus on the idea full-time. In an exchange with Polygon, the 27-year-old creative says that he got the idea after seeing titles like Quest Master, Super Dungeon Maker, and Super Dungeon Designer. But since all of these titles are top-down 2D pixel art games, “going with a N64 aesthetic felt evident,” he said.
The level design suite gives players all the classic weapons, items, and enemies they’d expect from a 3D Zelda game like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time — but Temple Maker 64 is careful not to use any names Nintendo uses. Similarly, the tunic-clad protagonist is highly reminiscent of Link without necessarily copying his design. Threading the needle like this might help Temple Maker 64 find an established audience. High-profile attempts to sell similar ideas, like Amazon’s dungeon-making party game King of Meat, have floundered even as they’ve offered extensive level design and community-focused sharing features.
The issue isn’t how these games play: It’s that people don’t necessarily want to make video games based on characters they have zero emotional attachment to. Beyond brand recognition, games like Super Mario Maker and its sequel are more likely to succeed because players with experience in the larger series come in with a wealth of knowledge about the types of levels that might work. It’s not necessarily easy to make one, but most of us know how a Zelda dungeon works.
Case in point: Though Temple Maker 64 is not out yet, its play testers are already running at full speed. Akela-morse recently shared a video on Reddit where one play tester created the Zelda equivalent of a Kaizo level. Kaizo refers to fan-made Super Mario levels that push players to the limit with extremely precise platforming. Similarly, Kaizo Zelda levels require mastery of movements like rolls, backflips, and side hops as well as expertise with how these actions interact with the environment and items. Though the Temple Maker 64 clip is only 33 seconds, the play tester showcases a number of high-level techniques that most of us would struggle to pull off:
Akela-morse released a Steam demo in May, and has big ambitions for the full release. Social features like comments, tagging, and lists are a top priority. The developer is also noodling with a potential single-player campaign, and the possibility of tapping other Zelda-like developers to make maps for the game.
For all of that to happen, Temple Maker 64 has to actually come out. Nintendo is notoriously litigious when it comes to defending its intellectual property, but Akela-morse isn’t too worried.
“Nintendo is aggressive about people using IPs, assets, or code they don’t own,” the developer wrote on Reddit. “They also try to patent game mechanics, but the patent is either refused or gets accepted because it’s extremely specific (and therefore barely enforced). I’m doing none of that. Legally speaking, there’s nothing they can do but watch in fear >:)”
Akela-morse tells Polygon that while he hopes his project succeeds, he’s also realistic about his chances. To hedge his bets, the developer is also producing another project called Seed of Life that appears to be influenced by The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. If nothing else, he wants to release the framework he created for Temple Maker 64 as an open-source project that could help others make their own games as well.
The developer says he is “fully prepared to go back to ‘getting a real job’ if things don’t work out. Either way, I’m eager to see where things will go from here.”