Quest Master is a hugely promising playground for Zelda fans

Upon starting Quest Master for the first time, I couldn’t help but think of two things. The first being, how the heck did they get this released without umpteen cease and desist letters from Nintendo? Followed instantly by: This has the potential to fulfil all kinds of childhood dreams from when I first played The Legend of Zelda.

Lovingly recreating the visual style of A Link to the Past, Quest Master is both a throwback and a remix of familiar and new elements. It borrows liberally from a host of games ranging back to the SNES and PlayStation 1 eras, yet feels like its own thing. Which is an accomplishment on its own, considering how iconic and embedded in our collective mind these games are.

The premise is simple, yet tantalizing. What if you could play a Zelda-style adventure game with friends, while also getting to create the dungeons yourself? Anyone who spent countless hours as a kid drawing maps and creating their own adventures will find themselves instantly drawn to this realization of those dreams.

Yet all of this comes with caveats, and some of them are noticeable. The game is nowhere finished. In fact, at this point, it’s more of a limited sandbox. A proof-of-concept that has a decent amount of substance, yet numerous areas that are simply unfinished. There’s no story to speak of, dialogue feels like a collection of placeholders, and it expects the player to devise their own fun – at least for now.

Which, for the most part, happens quite naturally. The dungeon crafting elements are the most robust and completed area of the game, and they work beautifully for the most part. While the tutorial itself is janky, once you get into the groove of things, Quest Master reveals itself an addictive and rewarding experience. It feels like magic jumping into a dungeon that looks and feels like classic Zelda, knowing that it’s something you made.

By the time the mechanics become more familiar, Quest Master reveals once more a level of sophistication I did not expect. It’s a mix of nostalgia, innovation, and fiendish inventiveness that had me grinning every time I figured out what the tools allowed to create. Even surprisingly complex puzzles weren’t out of the question. Granted, I wish the limited tutorial would have clued me in on at least the possibility of these things, but there is something to be said about the joy of discovery as well.

Like Mario Maker, another dream factory for 90s brats, Quest Master gives as much as you put into it. But it also comes with the issues that any public and online creator engine has. Namely, some of the publicly accessible dungeons are nothing more than community trolling. With little to no curation taking place, finding the really good stuff takes some effort. But when you do find them, it’s yet another showcase for just how promising Quest Master’s tools can be. There is a vast expanse of talented level designers out there, and it’s a joy to explore their creations.

On a technical level, there’s little to complain about. Quest Master is surprisingly solid for an Early Access title, with only a few rough edges here and there. Keyboard and mouse controls are lacking, and some of the menus are finicky, but that’s about it. In fact, once you look at how closely Quest Master emulates the Nintendo experience, the more impressive the whole thing feels.

Quest Master has an incredible amount of potential, especially for an Early Access title. It’s a sophisticated and mature exploration of the gameplay mechanics that enchanted us as kids, without ever falling for complacency. Instead, it elevates our nostalgia in the best kind of way, by making us think what exactly made the original games so much fun.

While light on content for now, with huge promises of an overworld maker and a story mode later on, Quest Master is more than worth the asking price, especially for those who have a desire to build their own adventures. It’s one of the happiest surprises of the year.