My Zelda Fan Game: "The Legend of Zelda: Spirit's Quest"

Hello all! I feel it is time to introduce you to my no-where-near-complete Zelda fan game called... *drum roll*

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit's Quest (a.k.a. TLoZ: SQ)

First things first, I must be clear that THIS GAME IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH NINTENDO IN ANY WAY. It's a fan game. The idea of a Zelda fan game is a lot like an artist drawing his/her own interpretation of Zelda on a canvas; it's inspired by Zelda, but it's still the artist's own work.
Furthermore, THIS GAME WILL NOT BE SOLD upon completion, because it is still using the names Zelda and Link (among other names), which are registered names under Nintendo. I'm not making it to make money anyway; it's just for personal satisfaction and for the love of Zelda. This means that this game will be given out as freeware; no charge will be made whatsoever (not even any donations) and no profit besides the satisfaction of being able to pay homage to the Zelda franchise and to allow other Zelda fans to enjoy my interpretation of the series. It will all be my own work (even that title graphic is a placeholder), all the graphics, code, sound effects (hopefully), everything. However, if I must use unoriginal works, anything that isn't mine will be properly credited with disclaimers and will be legal to use in a freeware fan game.

I do feel it's necessary to point out where my inspiration comes from though. Besides being inspired by Zelda (obviously), I was very much inspired to make TLoZ: SQ after playing a freeware (i.e. the original is free) game called Cave Story. Just check out my version of Link and you'll see the similarity between Cave Story's main character and mine:

Yes, I did make a direct edit of Cave Story's main character, which means that the character is not entirely mine. However, I went quite a bit beyond Cave Story's character and made many of my own animations. Here is an example of some stuff I've made:

I definitely couldn't have done it without Cave Story, so special credits must also be noted to that game.


WHEW! Now that all of the disclaimer stuff is behind, I can tell you what Spirit's Quest is all about. TLoZ: Spirit's Quest is an oldschool(ish) 2d action/adventure platformer style game for PC. It's being made with Game Maker 8. Now I'll stop right there. If any of you know the reputation of Game Maker, you probably have huge doubts after me mentioning that. However, I have been using GM ever since it came out in the mid 90's, and I've made enough failed projects to have the experience to know what makes a game good and how I can properly use GM to make fairly professional looking and feeling games.

Spirit's Quest's story is minimal, but that is because the design is planned to be a bit less linear than other Zelda's. The game starts with Link sleeping in his bed at night. Suddenly Link is awoken by the appearance of a Wizzrobe. The Wizzrobe introduces himself as Tangle. Tangle continues on to tell Link that he has a game that he wants Link to play. Unfortunately, the game is a life or death game where Link must fight his way through a massive dungeon. Escape or die. It's clear that Tangle is a bit short in the head; yes, he's crazy. Before Link can grab for his sword, Tangle transports Link into a dark dungeon room.

Now there is a ton I could talk about, but this would be waaaaaaaaaay too long, so I will just tell some of the good stuff. This "massive dungeon" is the entire game, but it's made up of many parts and Link will travel through forest-like areas, desert, snow, ice, swamp, all kinds of places. The game will be designed in a way that will allow the player to play these different areas in ANY order they please, thus acquiring main items (e.g. bow, bombs, boomerang, etc) in any order that sounds good. Do you want bombs first? Go for the area where you will get bombs. You want the power of the boomerang in the palm of your hand? Go ahead, it's your choice! Now, you're choice is not without strategy. Enemies will get harder as you go. Would you want to end up playing the ice area LAST with the HARDEST enemies? ... probably not. Because slipping and sliding while fighting the tough guys is.. well it's tough.

The game is designed with replay value in mind. I even plan to have most of the game made up of semi-randomly generated rooms. It should make each new quest a truly "new" quest.

Another cool thing: Link has a fairy, called Sprite. BUT, she is not as helpless as other fairy's you may know of. Sprite has magic and she can hold her own. You will gather new spells for her to use; face-melting spells that will decimate all on screen. Though magic does run out, so you can't just spam magic.

There is so much more to tell, but I will leave all that for another time. One more thing though: The game has just gotten past the basic physics and collisions code (walking, jumping, swimming, slipping on ice, climbing stairs, etc). That engine is the core of the game, so it is a huge step. I also have TONS of plans documented and a good amount of graphics going. Right now I'm working on coding the HUD functionality.

Here is what the HUD is planned to look like:

And here is a peek at the newest design of the item/menu screen:

Well, that's all for now. The game has a LONG way to go, but it's going strong. I will probably make an update with a playable demo of Link's basic actions next. I don't know how long it will take me to get to that point though. Programming is a hobby, not a job (and I have 3 jobs). So just keep a look out for the next update if you're interested.