What is this?
This is a public very very early preview of Beethro's Awakening, a hold-in-progress I've been tinkering with for a while. It's a take-off of Link's Awakening, but is in no way a carbon copy, and has (or at least is planned to eventually have) loads of original stuff to it.
At present, this version has very few non-placeholder graphics, which makes a lot of things look nothing like what they're supposed to represent, only a little it of the overworld-related work done, etc. BUT, it has one entire dungeon composed of 25(!) pure puzzle rooms in probably its final state, save for the usual playtesting-requiring fixes any hold goes through before completion. This hold so far features a special custom element, found in that dungeon, that
completely changes the way the player must think of pits and pools of deep water, and roughly half of the dungeon's rooms feature puzzles that ask the player to use this unique item in various clever ways.
There's also a few legs of the trading sequence, but they're kind of silly and incomplete at the moment.
Why is this?
I had the inspiration to start making this hold while playing through MetDROiD and Link's Awakening DX around the same time. The logic in my head went that if someone can make not one, not two, but
three holds based loosely on Metroid, which has almost no obvious relation to DROD whatsoever, why can't I, or we, make a hold based on a Legend of Zelda, which has an awful lot of similarity? Think about it: Puzzles, dungeons, monsters, swords, walking around on a grid, big overworld maps? All things that DROD and LoZ have in common.
But why am I previewing it so early?
Well, it's taken a lot of time and effort to make the first dungeon, and that's less than eighth of what I want the whole hold to be. I'm seriously considering asking for the help of fellow architects in coming up with some more interesting overworld puzzles than there presently are (in most rooms, there isn't any puzzle at all, just some window dressing), and more importantly, possibly giving an entire dungeon to a single other architect to work on. If I do manage to attract any collaborators, they could even contribute ideas and maybe even coding for more items like the one in the first dungeon that allow for unique puzzles and gameplay possibly not seen before in DROD.
So, this is more or less an interest-gauging exercise to see whether anyone might have an interest in having a hand in building this hold. Also possibly to see if anyone besides me is really interested in
playing it.
How to play this?
Probably the only really important thing to this hold so far is that you should step on or bump into people and items to interact with them, pick them up, etc. Also, bump into the doors of houses to enter them. Caves are currently represented by tunnels; walk into the tunnel to go into the cave. If you bump on a house's door and don't go anywhere, that means the house hasn't been put into the hold yet.
The hold is, as usual for an in-progress hold, anyone edit. Since the first dungeon is the "
meat"
of this preview, feel free to just stick Beethro in the entrance to that and play through.
If you want to play "
legitimately"
and you've never played Link's Awakening, I'll put a short walkthrough in the following secret for how to get to the dungeon:
Click here to view the secret text
×Leave the house, go west one room, south two rooms and then east one room to get your sword.
With the sword, go north four rooms, then east one room, and walk into the tunnel. You'll be in a cave! Go the obvious way. When you get out, kill or avoid the three goblins and bump into the thing in the southwest corner. Go back through the cave, and then go west one room, north one room, and bump into the "goblin king" looking NPC to kill him.
Bump into the treasure chest from the south to get a key. Go south four rooms, east one room, bump into the keyhole and then walk onto the stairs.
Items? What?
In MetDROiD AE all you get are codes that act as keys to certain doors throughout the hold. In Prime, you get more codes that act as keys to open doors. In Echoes, you get a mix of things that just act as basic keys, things that players already have access to in other holds (i.e., mimic potions), and a few unique things created to help the player get past newly-made obstacles.
I want to do something different with Beethro's Awakening. Rather than adding new obstacles or just giving the player "
keys"
to unlock "
doors"
I've added, I want the items in Beethro's Awakening to allow for new ways of interacting with already-existing elements of DROD.
Here's a list of item ideas that might give you some clue what I'm talking about, including the one I've already implemented into this preview:
Click here to view the secret text
×Float Feather (already in hold; found in Level 1) - enables Beethro to leap across single-tile gaps (pits and deep water) by teetering on them. With this equipped, Beethro can jump any way that a Wraithwing could fly as long as it would be above land afterward. This has lots of interesting effects: It uses the teleport player command, which behaves in such a way that stabs happen while leaving the old tile out but not on the new tile on the turn of the jump. Since leaping a pit takes only a single turn, pits become a way of moving twice as fast, which is pretty important for time-sensitive situations. Jumping off of a trapdoor still drops it, which allows for unique trapdoor puzzles. So on, so forth. Obviously inspired by the Roc's Feather.
Rock Lifty Thing (name not final) -- Inspired by the power bracelet. The hold will eventually be littered with things that resemble obstacles maybe? But these, rather than just being in the player's and monsters' way all the time, can be picked up by a Beethro who possesses this item by simply bumping into them. This item is in the testing phase, where I'm working out how they should work. Presently they work like this: Beethro bumps the rock, becomes "disarmed" temporarily. Whenever afterward the player enters a command that would normally have him move in a direction, he instead throws the rock in that direction. It sails until it hits something or lands on whatever tile is as far away in that direction as a lone wraithwing likes to wait. This acts as a slow, limited, but ranged weapon and method of activating orbs. Obviously this also allows the player to go places they couldn't before, by picking up the rocky obstacles in the way. This also acts as an unusually quick way to turn Beethro, which could be useful in certain kinds of tight situations.
Fuse Box -- This is a replacement for Link's bombs, because bombs in DROD are way too big to pick up, much less carry twenty of in a bag. The idea is that Beethro has a magic box full of fuses, and can lay down (build) them at will. Possibly this will use the special command key to build a fuse under the player. This will completely change the meaning of bombs and powder kegs in general. It might make bomb mazes slightly harder to include in this hold, at least past the point the player gets this item.
Hookshot? Switch Hook? -- Obviously just something like one of these items. I know somebody already made "a" hookshot in the Lavender Levels, but I'd probably want this one to behave a bit differently from that. The switch hook is possibly a more interesting option, but I'm not sure the coding necessary for it is possible. It would have to somehow "set aside" whatever the hook hits, teleport the player to that thing's former position, and then put the thing that was hit where the player just was. If this is possible it could open up completely different ways to approach even basic roach battles.
Wade Boots -- DROD has a command that lets the architect decide whether the player treats shallow water like deep water, turns to stealth in shallow water, or wades atop it, able to attack. This item would allow the player to decide that instead, maybe by using the special command key or something else to put on these boots, which somehow allow Beethro to stand atop shallow water without getting his sword wet, and them off again to allow him to hide in the shallows again. Replacement for the flippers because I don't think letting the player just walk around in deep water is feasible or terribly interesting.
____________________________
109th Skywatcher
Here are some links to Things!
Click here to view the secret text
[Last edited by Xindaris at 10-15-2015 04:10 AM]
