#zettel #gaming sourced from: [[The Minish Cap, The Legend of Zelda]] # My opinion on the Dungeon Design in Minish Cap varies Because there is no uniform design style in the game I really like the dungeon design in the game in the sense that the places you explore are all very interesting and fun, and there's a lot of clever ways that the game uses its dungeon items to its advantage. A lot of the dungeons feel very guided while not being overly direct. You end up returning to a lot of places quite often, like in the Temple of Droplets, for example. The items in dungeons initially feel very specific and niche, but then you see that almost all of them have applications in the overworld of Hyrule. The only really niche one was the lantern from Temple of Droplets, but that's understandable. The use of the Lantern only comes around in the Graveyard Area, which comes and goes pretty quickly. However, I have to admit that a lot of the ideas in Minish Cap's dungeons are ultimately very simple and the level design is only mediocre. It isn't fair to compare a top-down 2D Zelda dungeon design to say, anything from games like Ocarina of time, Majora's Mask or Wind Waker, but I do think there could've been more development with regards to some of the "size" mechanics. furthermore, there's a limited use of verticality, which I think could've been more enjoyable in dungeons like the Palace of Winds. This dungeon in particular is a very loosely tied together string of minibosses and action platforming puzzles, which are fine, but I feel they lose the depth of interaction since ultimately it requires little thought of where to go next. this ultimately boils down to what you want a dungeon to be: a test of intellect with puzzles and mapping keys to locks, or a test of skill and combat. The former works much better in Minish Cap since the combat in Minish Cap is far more simple because of the hardware, so when the latter are presented they don't have the lasting impact that one would hope to experience in a dungeon. ## Dungeon Specific Notes - [[The Temple of Droplets is my Favorite Dungeon in Minish Cap]]