Zelda Fan Game Central

A creeping fear stalks the land of Hyrule. Its people tormented by terrible nightmares, this once peaceful kingdom is slowing slipping into chaos and misrule. With their dreams haunted by a desperate plea for help, a boy named Link and a princess named Zelda find themselves mysteriously drawn to a dark tower on a forgotten island. There they discover the terrifying true nature of the kingdom's curse...
Can Link harness the dark power of the Shadowgazer to awaken the hero within and bring Hyrule back into the light?

Downloads:
Get them from The Shadowgazer mini site, or simply get them from the links below:
Technical Demo | Mirror
Playable Demo | Mirror
z3 2007 Trailer
Maren Boss Video
NCFC 2008 Video

Screens:

Trailer:

Other videos:

Updates:
15/6/2006 - Demo available
26/6/2006 - Progress update
4/7/2006 - Day/night cycle
2/9/2006 - Dungeon update
2/10/2006 - Concept art sketches
30/10/2006 - Progress update
17/12/2006 - Cucco attack video
21/2/2007 - The Maren
27/7/2007 - z3 video trailer
6/8/2007 - z3 demo out
17/10/2007 - Introducing Noon
24/2/2008 - A bunch of new screens
3/6/2008 - Maren boss video
16/10/2008 - NCFC preview

So here's my project, been working on it for about 18 months now and it's nearly at a stage where I can knock some of the elements together into a respectable demo. Engine-wise Link can pretty much do everything you would expect him to, menus and displays are all working, I have a story plotted, designs drawn, a lot of custom sprites and tiles made, but there's still a ton of work to do before I can call it a 'game' - building more than a couple of rooms might be a start! But right now I'm focused on completing a demo. I've already decided what elements I'm putting in - and what I'm leaving out - so it's just a case of ironing out the bugs.

Obviously I'm using a lot of the familiar stuff from Zelda but I've come up with what I hope you'll think is an original take on the Zelda formula, and I've tried to give it a true Zelda feel. I've even decided where it might fit in the timeline: some time after WW.. How's that for vague? Look at me, I'm invisible!

This game will revolve around the themes of sleep, and dreams and nightmares, but it also recycles one of the major themes of the Zelda games: two different versions of the same world, where Link's actions in one will affect the other, like the light/dark world of LTTP and the present/future of OOT.
There's the 'real' waking world, and there's the dreamlike/nightmarish sleeping world (haven't quite figured out what to call it yet) which Link can reach at any time by climbing into a bed and going to sleep.
I've not explored all the gameplay possibilities yet but at its simplest it'll be along the lines of, for example, an NPC's worst fear exists in the sleeping world and Link will conquer it, curing them of their nightmare in the waking world. So Link is playing at Sandman in this game, turning bad dreams into good ones. That's the idea anyway... And because it's so easy to reach the sleeping world, I expect players will be jumping between the two quite frequently. The sort of dynamic I'm going for is like going in and out of the shadow world in FSA, so hopefully it'll be quite fast-paced.

As you can see from the screens, one of the things I've borrowed from TP is horseback combat. I've devised a control system, where you can move the horse and at the same time turn Link in the saddle and attack either side or to the rear (with bow and sword.) It's only like running left or right and angling your gun up and down in, say, Metroid, but it works a treat. And as you can see from the spurs icons Link can dig his heels in to go faster.

So, yeah, demo on the way, and I'll be updating quite frequently, so let me know what you think...

Cheers,

KM