Here is the opening shot of the quests where Link is washed up on shore: (I also plan to put some transparent looming clouds here and there) 
This is a project I've long had in mind for about 3 years now. Even before Isle of the Winds was created. Sadly, to this day, I have yet to find a suitable tileset to fully realize how I wanted it to be, but I am going to settle on the Pure EXTREME version of Mr. Zs'. It seems to have a lot of tiles other sets are lacking and has some interesting and gloomy palettes with which I can utilize to the fullest extent. Do not expect this quest to be cheerful or to have colorful palettes, I'm only using the dark, gloomy ones. And to back that up, I've scoured the songs of Duke Nukem 3D for the perfect musical accompaniment to help with that gloomy, depressing mood.
Basically, its another adventure of Link either before or after Koholint (doesn't matter when it happens) where his ship crash lands on ANOTHER island. This time however, it appears to be a deserted island. With one single village of note that seems to be run down and crawling with enemies both friendly and not. The major feature of the island is a rising volcanic mountain in the center of the island and this effectively alters the island's appearance (more on that later).
There are six main areas of the quest overworld:
1. The starting beach, deserted village, graveyard area.
2. The murky, swampy bayous of some ancient Mayan civilization (home to level 1).
3. North of this is the desolate wastelands on the west side of the volcano where it is devoid of life safe for one monstrousity of a fortress (home to level 4).
4. Directly east of the village is where the lava seems to flow down and cake the land with its scorching waste and the wind is always blowing ash, there also seems to be some sort of anomaly high in the sky over the flows (home to level 2).
5. North of the lava flows, sheltered on the eastern side of the volcano is the redwood forest where a deserted castle lies in ruins and beautiful waterfall canyon (home to level 3).
6. The final area is directly north of the village and leads straight up the volcanic mountain, First dodging lava rocks and lava flows to the final snowy peaks at the very top (home to the final level 5).
Hidden amongst all these areas are various caves, tombs, caverns, etc.
As for the levels, each one is unique.
Level 1 is the ancent Mayan Ruin where you must constantly raise and lower the water level to reach and re-reach certain areas of the dungeon as you progress.
Level 2 is a Sky Garden high above the lava flows (the only cheerful palette I'll use). It has two sides, a topside and a dark underside. (think of Illusion of Gaia's sky garden where what you do on one side affects the other)
Level 3 is the ruined castle and the only time you'll be using normal keys other than the boss key. You must find tons of keys and open up the various locked rooms. This dungeon is more non-linear than the rest.
Level 4 is the fortress in the wastelands powered by some sort of electrical energy. You must turn on/off constantly power to certain parts of the fortress to progress forward.
The final level is in the volcano itself where its a simple straight forward dungeon crawling with lava and enemies.
As for items you can have access to:
Wooden Boomerang
Bombs
Bow
Arrow
Ice Arrow (for the volcano)
Red Candle
Whistle
Blue Potion (I'll get to this in a bit)
Bait (for bargaining purposes with friendly monsters)
Wand
Magic Book
Ladder
Raft
Power Gauntlet
Power Gauntlet level 2
Magic Key (for only the ruined castle)
Blue Mail
Magic Shield
If you'll notice, I've left out most of the new items, because in fact, you aren't getting any of them. It'll stick with just the old standard items from the original Zelda. I've also limited you to only the blue mail. Since having 16 hearts, a potion and red mail makes things immensely easy, having nothing but the blue mail as an armor upgrade should be just fine. Furthermore, you cannot buy hearts or potions in shops you find. You must find your blue potions. There is only a SET AMOUNT of blue potions in the quest. You decide how you're going to use them and when. Because once they are gone, they are gone. I'll test this aspect to make sure its fair before release. And no mirror shield, the few mirrorrobes I will be putting in are optional and will have mirrors included in their arenas. Besides, when a like-like gets you, I want there to be some penalty. Furthermore, the gameplay will be similar to that of Metroid where you don't necessarily find key items in dungeons and can simply find them on the overworld and acquiring them opens up new areas of the island to explore.
Anyway, that's my idea. The goal of the game is to find out what exactly happened on the island, where the source of the evil is and where it came from, and finally to eliminate it.
So does this 3 years worth of planning actually sound good?
