Super Dungeon Maker

I spent longer than I expected just sitting in the editor, arranging torch placements and fiddling with lighting levels before I'd even placed a single enemy. That's either a sign of a well-designed toolset or a sign that I have a problem. Probably both. Super Dungeon Maker is a top-down dungeon construction and play sandbox built by a tiny German two-person studio called FIRECHICK, and its entire soul is borrowed from the 16-bit Zelda era. You play as Fink, a rooster with a sword, who exists mainly as your test dummy and as the vessel you hand off to the community once you hit "publish". The creation side is the star here. You lay floors, drop walls, place locked doors and matching keys, scatter enemies like the burrowing Sandcrawler and the Rotten Egg, set boss encounters featuring creatures like the Wormion, and choose a dungeon theme: nature, desert, ice, or a cyber-esque variant. The channel mechanic lets you wire switches to doors and trigger sequences in a way that approaches light puzzle scripting without demanding any coding knowledge. Dungeons can span three floors up and three floors down, and a wide-map option gives you real lateral room when you want it. On the play side, Fink enters each dungeon with only his sword; tools like bombs, a grappling hook, and a shield are found in locked chests along the way, which gives creators control over gating and pacing in a very classically Zelda-feeling way. The hub world, called the Village, houses the Eggpedia building where top-voted community dungeons surface, and a sandbox test area sits there too, ready for you to throw enemies in and watch them bounce around. The community output during the game's lifespan was genuinely impressive. Some players used numbered naming schemes to build multi-dungeon series, and the more ambitious creations involved sliding ice-block puzzles, non-linear central chambers with ability-gated passageways, and precision trap sequences that took visible design intent. The 8-bit soundtrack does its job quietly and well, the kind of looping music that doesn't demand your attention but makes the hour you spent placing hidden spikes feel pleasantly purposeful. The pixel art style sits somewhere between a Game Boy Color title and a cleaned-up SNES palette, and while it will not dazzle anyone, it is consistent and readable, which matters a lot in an editor. Here is the part you need to hear clearly before considering a purchase: FIRECHICK has officially announced they will no longer develop new features for the game, limiting future work to critical bug fixes only. The community pool exists and has over ten thousand created dungeons in it, but the pipeline for fresh content from the developers is closed. There is no story campaign, no character progression, and each dungeon resets Fink back to three hearts and a sword when he exits, which strips out any sense of accumulation. Critics at launch were split between praising the intuitive editor and lamenting the lack of an anchoring campaign or meaningful overarching progression loop. Both camps were right. For the player who genuinely wants to build, share, and consume Zelda-flavored dungeons in a low-friction environment, the toolset delivers on its specific promise. The editor is approachable, the theming options give real visual variety, and the channel system has enough depth to reward patience. The ask is honest: this is a creation and sharing tool, not a story-driven adventure. If that trade-off works for you, there is a library of community dungeons already waiting. Just calibrate your expectations around a game in maintenance mode rather than active growth.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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