How Zelda's Puzzle Box Dungeons Work

This is a Karakuri puppet. It's a Japanese marionette that uses a complex system of gears and mechanisms to create movement. And they're particularly important to one Eiji Aonuma, producer of the Zelda franchise. Aonuma studied and made automatons like this while at university in Tokyo - and that's what lead to him being hired at Nintendo. In fact, they so impressed the firm's chief designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, that Aonuma was put in charge of constructing the dungeons for the next big Zelda game: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

And, I think you can see the relation - because there's an almost eery similarity between these mechanised marionettes and some of the dungeons in the Zelda games - which move and shift and flip and turn with whirring clockwork precision. There's the Water Temple, where the player can set the depth of the dungeon's water level. There are the mechanised Divine Beasts, like a robot elephant with a moving trunk. And there's the Stone Tower Temple, which literally flips upside down, changing the floor into the ceiling and vice versa.

I, unequivocally, love these things. I mean, I adore Zelda dungeons in general - they're just such fascinating spaces, with incredible atmosphere and clever lock & key structures and titanic boss fights. But there's something particularly special about the dungeons that are built around shifting architecture and changing water currents and even time travel. These dungeons are mysterious and otherworldly and utterly bonkers - but more than that, they promote a sort of puzzle design that we just don't see in a lot of games.

A wild mix of navigation and spatial reasoning - in a complex, three dimensional setting. Because, sure - there are plenty of puzzles in Zelda dungeons. You know, single room stumpers about pushing blocks or twisting mirrors. But these dungeons go further - they're not just a container for puzzles, but the container itself is a puzzle. Ah, my brain! So, how, exactly, do these puzzle box dungeons work? Pretty much every dungeon of this style, works like this: there's a switch - like a lever or a button or a crystal orb.

Link can flip the switch to change the layout of the dungeon in some way: it might reverse the water direction, or spin a staircase, or just flip the positions of these coloured blocks. Importantly, the switch has an effect somewhere else in the dungeon - not just the room you're currently stood in. So you can pull on this lever, and that lets water shoot out from beneath your feet - but it also causes the water level to rise in a room on the complete other side of the dungeon.

It's this set-up which leads to the dungeon's puzzles. Which, if you break them down into their most simple form - are about changing the dungeon so its in a position or state the lets you get where you need to go. Let me give you an example. You're in the Water Temple, you're swimming up this passageway, and you notice this cracked wall. You can't bomb through it because bombs don't work underwater. So, you need to go to a different room, set the water level to rest at floor two, and then come back.

You can now swim up and blow through the wall. Smashing! Now, when I put it like this, it's not the most complex puzzle in the world. But here's why it works. Imagine if you could change the water level at any time, by pressing a button on the controller, say. You could just set it to floor two from within this room, and go straight on through. But no - you need to go to a different room, change the dungeon to suit your needs, and then come back.

This first principle requires you to make a mental map of the dungeon, so you can remember to return to this area when you've changed the dungeon elsewhere. Okay. Imagine this puzzle if you saw the dungeon from this zoomed-out, isometric perspective. You'd easily see how the water level affected every area in the temple, and immediately identify all the rooms you need to visit. But no - you have a really limited perspective, where you can only see what's happening in your immediate area.

That's why I've often likened a puzzle box dungeon to solving a Rubik's cube - from the inside. This second principle means you need to actually understand how changing the dungeon will impact rooms beyond your current vantage point. Or, finally, imagine if you changed the water level and it had a permanent, irreversible effect on the dungeon. You'd know that the dungeon was now in the right position and you wouldn't need to think about the mechanism any further.

But no, in Zelda dungeons you can almost always switch back and forth between the different dungeon positions. And that's assuming there's only two states - the water in the Water Temple can be set to three different levels, the staircase in Lakebed Temple can be in four positions, and the rotating belly of Vah Naboris can be set in 64 different combinations. This third principle means that you have to set the dungeon's current layout with intention - not permanently, and not randomly.

So, these three principles drive the puzzles in this sort of dungeon. They force you to think about the dungeon as a single space where choices in one room can affect things in another. Which means the only way to get where you need to go is to construct a mental map of places you need to revisit, figure out how the mechanism will impact the space, make intentional choices about how the dungeon should be set, and then navigate your way to the goal.

You can't brute force the puzzle through trial and error. Or just get to the exit by randomly wandering around. You have to show a real understanding of the dungeon's design if you want to succeed. Now, most dungeons have more than one of these situations. Like, in the Sandship you'll need to be in the present in order to open this door, but then travel into the past to power up the machine inside. That means you'll need to jump between the different set-ups depending on your current goal - sending you zig-zagging back and forth around the dungeon.

And this only happens because changing the dungeon will open some pathways to the player - but also shut some others. Like, in the Great Bay Temple, changing the water direction will open access to some tunnels, but close off access to others. And this can lead to a clever puzzle in of itself. So, in the Ancient Cistern, moving the elevator down gives us access to the underworld - but simultaneously cuts off access to this chest.

So the solution is to put the mechanism in a specific position - in this case, have the elevator raised. And then navigate in a roundabout way to access the same area from a different route - in this case, climbing down a rope. And speaking of roundabouts, we see this sort of gameplay in the Oracle games, due to these spinning platforms. Step on them and the whole thing will rotate 90 degrees - but also flip its direction.

So if you go back on the roundabout, you'll just be sent back to where you started. So in this dungeon, we see a treasure chest we want to get to on the right. We need to start by setting the roundabout to a specific position - and then navigate around the whole dungeon on foot in order to reach this top path. Now when we ride the spinning disc, we get to where we want to go. Terrific. Just like before, this sort of puzzle promotes a global way of thinking.

These dungeons are not a collection of unrelated rooms, or a linear sequence of chambers - but a contiguous, interconnected space with different routes - in both two and three dimensions. While these principles are used in most of the franchise’s puzzle box dungeons, there are a few that don't follow this path. Eagle's Tower in Link's Awakening is built around a single, irreversible change - as the top of the temple crashes down into the floor below.

Instead, it's about knocking down these four pillars with a giant ball. And, importantly, the ball cannot be carried between floors - which is inconvenient because that's how Link gets access to the different pillars. So, the solution goes back to that global way of thinking: we need to throw the ball over gaps - and then walk around to collect the ball and move on. We need to juggle the position of Link and the ball at all times.

Also, the Divine Beasts in Breath of the Wild break principle one by having the option to control the dungeon's layout be available at any time, right there on the menu. This time-saving feature does make many of the puzzles a bit trivial to solve - but the dungeons' designers still find ways to create clever conundrums. For example, the belly of the camel dungeon Vah Naboris can create a powered electrical circuit, which causes the camel’s tail to rise up.

There’s a nice puzzle where you need to intentionally break the circuit to lower the tail, then position Link on the tail, and finally fix the circuit to make the tail lift up. The only problem with this sort of dungeon… is that some people just really struggle with them. For all the praise I give the Water Temple, it's impossible to ignore that its deeply polarising among Zelda players. And look, it doesn't help that you had to go into the menu every five minutes to change Link's shoes - that is absolutely tedious, Aonuma has personally apologised for the transgression, and it was thankfully fixed in the 3DS remake.

But the dungeon is also complex, convoluted, and maze-like. People saw their progress through the game stall, it sent them running to a walkthrough, and it made second playthroughs rather unappetising. The tricky temples of Majora's Mask had much the same effect. And I think that shook the confidence of Nintendo - a company that goes to great pains to make its games easy and accessible to all, *ahem* able-bodied *ahem* players.

So, we saw much more simple and straightforward layouts in games like The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. And while brilliant puzzle box dungeons returned in Skyward Sword, most of the conundrums were spoiled by overzealous hints and an aggravating sidekick. Meanwhile in Breath of the Wild, changes to the system like having the dungeon's controls be readily accessible from any location made those Divine Beasts a little too easy for my liking.

But I think there are ways to keep the challenge of these dungeons without alienating people. So, it's important to teach the player how the dungeon will change when the effect is made. In Skyward Sword, the tricky Sandship dungeon comes after two other whole areas that effectively explain how the timeshift stones work. By the time you get to the ship, you'll know exactly what will happen in the past and present timelines.

The dungeons can also be built around simple and ordered level design that aids the player in navigation. A good strategy we've seen in many Zelda dungeons is the hub and spoke system, where a central room forks off into lots of different corridors - providing a handy base for players to always return to. This can help the player structure their mental map. Also, Nintendo can reward mastery by having the most tricky puzzles grant the player optional goodies that are irrelevant to the dungeon's critical path.

For example, in Lakebed Temple, it's possible to reverse the entire dungeon in order to access a treasure chest on the opposite side of the temple - which rewards inquisitive players with a handy, but optional, heart piece. And finally, hints are... fine! No one likes getting completely stuck. But just make them completely optional, rather than springing them on a player before they've even had a chance to try and solve the conundrum at hand.

Ultimately, I hope we see Nintendo revisit this sort of level design in future Zelda games. I'm not saying it's the only way to make a good Zelda dungeon - there are plenty of good temples that are all about atmosphere, or incredible set pieces, or storytelling, or action-packed pacing. And I think the best games have a real mix of dungeons. But no Zelda game is complete without a dungeon that moves and shift and rotates. One built around ambitious structures and brain-busting rules. One that will have you tearing your hair out in frustration.

But, like, in a good way. And it's vitally important because these dungeons are truly unique in gaming. It's so rare to find puzzles that test your navigation and spatial reasoning in such a rich and involving manner. I mean, sure, plenty of games try to mimic Zelda - and some do it quite successfully - but to my knowledge, no game has anything remotely similar to these amazing puzzle box dungeons. It's end screen recommendation time! And I'm going for the very appropriate Carto.

This is a puzzle adventure where you can move the tiles on the map screen - to make the world shift and rotate beneath your feet. This leads to lots of clever puzzles about creating specific landmarks like winding roads or massive forests. It's backed up by adorable art, and a great adaptive soundtrack. It's out now on all major platforms.