Originally Posted by
Glenn the Great
I can tell you that during the 3rd Quest Contest the rules of design were extremely strict.
The liberties allowed to be taken with the design had to dovetail very tightly with those taken by Nintendo for the 2nd quest.
Some specific examples include:
- Starting screen, palettes, and sounds had to stay the same.
- No new graphics or mechanics could be introduced. This was controversial at the time, considering that the 2nd quest introduced the walk-through-walls mechanic as well as a few others.
- Changes to screens on the overworld were very limited. Perhaps to 2 screens, and the new design had to be a clone of some other screen.
- Secrets were limited to one per screen (caves, burnable bushes, whistle triggers, etc)
- In the dungeons, every screen's design had to be a re-use of a design found in either the 1st or 2nd quest.
It had the effect of focusing peoples' designs and creating a predictable experience, but I found it to be unnecessarily stifling.
I remember struggling hard to find a way to work some small measure of novelty into my quest, and thus needing to explain every idea to a judge for approval lest my entry be disqualified, which resulted in every single idea of mine being shot down save for my Level 9 being allowed to have two entrances.
I don't know what the rules were for the 4th quest contest. I do feel that a "5th Quest" should be generally consistent with quests 1 through 4, but I think that new mechanics should not be ruled out entirely the way they were in the 3rd quest contest. In other words I think each successive quest should feel like an evolution of the one that came before it.