By Linnie W. Phillips 
Super Dungeon Maker makes no effort to hide what it is and what influenced it. The name recalls the level construction of Super Mario Maker, while the graphics and mechanics are clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda, in particular A Link to the Past. It even features a character named Fink. And since we’ve never had an official Zelda level creator (unless you count the very simple one in the Link’s Awakening Remake), I can’t blame the developer FIRECHICK (that’s how it’s written on Steam) for throwing his cock comb into the Ring. But can this indie game scratch the itch as much as its Inspiration?
Immediately, Super Dungeon Maker places you in a starting dungeon to help players understand the type of mechanics they will be dealing with. Here it becomes clear that the developers had a connection with the past in mind, because the starting dungeon alone contains rising and falling bollards, holes that take the hero of the rooster Fink to the lower levels of the dungeon, pots to lift (not to break with the sword), etc. But there is also an object that allows Fink to dodge, both to dodge enemies and to overcome holes in the ground; I don’t want to say that there is nothing new here. But the most important thing when playing Dungeons is that the controls are smooth and responsive. You can use a controller for a more traditional game or a mouse and keyboard for Fink to strike towards the pointer. As an experienced Zelda player, there is nothing too strident here and everything seems natural.
The visuals are also commendable. Although Super Dungeon Maker uses pixelated graphics, it is not the generic 8-bit graphics that often seem lazy, nor is it an exact replica of the classic Zelda games (although there are obvious similarities.) Instead, Sprites have their own style, for which I can only think of the adjective “sparkling”.
“The characters are cute, it’s almost three-dimensional and everything is animated. NPCs jump up and down in The Overworld, The grass sways back and forth, and the branches rustle in the wind. It’s a good reminder that pixelated graphics don’t need to be burdened by the limitations of their origin.
All this is very nice, but if you are interested in this game, it is of course about building your own dungeons. The dungeon building interface can be a bit overwhelming and confusing at first, because there is no tutorial, at least not what I found. Instead, you need to experiment for yourself. There are tooltips that explain the individual items when you hover over them, but they didn’t always seem to work for me. Still, assembling a simple dungeon is as easy as point and click. There is a fairly good selection of decorations, obstacles and enemies to choose from, including Boss enemies based on those from the first Zelda games and several visual themes for the dungeons. You won’t find as much variety as Super Mario Maker, but that’s to be expected.
My only real complaint is that some of the more complex things you can put in your dungeon would really benefit from a tutorial. There are spawners that allow you to add basic logic to dungeons, which makes things appear according to defined criteria. But setting them up correctly is more confusing than it needs to be. For example, spawning something when all the monsters in the room have died does not work in the same way as spawning something when the only boss monster in the room has died.