We need more multiplayer Legend of Zelda games, and Rogue Heroes is the proof why

My son and I often play video games together on the Nintendo Switch. He is a huge Minecraft fan, and together we’ve played for over 400 hours! I needed a bit of a break from Minecraft, but he loves to play games together. That was when I searched the demos for something new and fun to play with him. While doing so, I noticed that Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos not only had a demo but was a game we could play together. Just from the pictures alone I could see the influence of A Link to the Past and wondered how it would play as a multiplayer game.

After playing for more than 20 hours with my son and about eight hours solo, I can honestly say that I enjoy the game more as a multiplayer game. This has made me wish for another multiplayer game like Four Swords. In fact, why hasn’t there been another multiplayer game for the Legend of Zelda franchise? We’ve now seen that a dungeon-crawling, puzzle-solving, town-building game that looks like a Zelda game can become a hit, so why hasn’t Nintendo capitalized on that yet? We’ve seen the Zelda franchise branch out with Cadence of Hyrule and Age of Calamity, so the next logical step should be another multiplayer game, right? How can Rogue Heroes inspire the franchise that inspired it?

One of the best parts about playing Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos together is exploring the land cooperatively. I can go in one direction on the screen and slash bushes to find coins while my son does it on the other end of the screen. We can work together on the same task and cut the time it would take for one person to do it in half. One of my favorite menial tasks in Link’s Awakening is cutting down the grass in order to find coins. It would be great to see another 2D top-down style game that allows multiple players to search the land for coins or hearts.

Imagine watching as Zelda or a Goron cut down grass and bushes together with Link. Maybe the Goron could roll over the grass while Zelda could use magic spells to remove the grass and find coins. One player could fish in a fishing spot while the other player cuts down objects in search of hearts or coins.

It is also fun to explore a dungeon together in Rogue Heroes. I can attack skeletons on one side of the room while my son destroys bats on the opposite side of the room. Sometimes, in this rogue-like game, the dungeons throw a room at you that absolutely needs to be solved by working together as a team. In the picture above I need to hit the green glowing orb in order for my son to access the part of the room that he is pulling on a chain.

In a multiplayer Zelda game, the same thing could happen where different rooms generate in a dungeon based on how many players there are. Link could be interacting with something to open up certain areas for Revali to fly over in order to access new parts of the room. This would expand upon an already great system of gameplay for the franchise and revitalize it. Not to mention also generating a new challenge for speed run players as the rooms are randomly generated.

In the images below, my son and I demonstrated that you need to work together and pass around a crystal globe in order to solve the puzzles in certain rooms. The globe can’t be passed over every part of the room, forcing one player to hold the globe while the other player often risks their health to get to the sweet spot to catch the globe. A multiplayer Zelda game could also utilize a passing and catching mechanic necessary to solve some of the dungeon rooms.

When your player dies in Rogue Heroes, one of their surviving team members needs to literally pick up your lifeless skull and navigate to a healing station in a previously explored room to revive you. They can’t attack or interact with anything while holding the skull, making them very vulnerable. It becomes necessary to do this though, as the generated rooms are dependent on teamwork. In The Legend of Zelda, death means restarting over again at the beginning of a dungeon. In a multiplayer mode, they could use the same reviving mechanic that Rogue Heroes uses. This would again revive the franchise, as it would change a fixed and sometimes stale dungeon environment.

When Link perishes, his friend would have to carry his skull (or body) to revive him. They could even use a system where Link would lose some of his stamina to revive all of his hearts. The statues could look like the one from Breath of the Wild that is near the outskirts of Hateno Village even. Whatever way the developers would decide to create a reviving mechanic, I would love to see that happen in a multiplayer Zelda game.

Stats! Multiplayer games are more fun when you compare each other’s worth in stats. Rogue Heroes will show you who found the most gems, who killed the most beasts, and who used the most magic spells. Nothing excites my son more than when he sees that he killed more beasts than me. Then, he proceeds to tell me that he is carrying the team (he only beat me by one!). After defeating a dungeon boss in a Zelda game the same type of stats could be shown too. Players could potentially compete against each other to reach these milestones first while also working together to solve puzzles and defeat the dungeon. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

Playing a multiplayer game inspired by single-player aspects in the Zelda franchise has shown me that we need another multiplayer Zelda game. There are a bounty of fun aspects in Rogue Heroes I wish would transfer over to a new 2D top-down style Zelda game. They would also allow players to play the game with different characters besides Link.

Being able to explore different parts of the same shared screen would increase cooperation and save time. Working together in order to solve puzzles found in the rooms can increase the difficulty level. Randomly generated rooms based on the number of players would increase replayability and also potential chaos. Forcing players to revive one another would be a fresh mechanic for the franchise. Having players race to defeat monsters in a room to get the crown at the end scene increases in-game competition. All of these fresh multiplayer features found in Rogue Heroes would really refresh the Zelda franchise for me in many ways. Please, Nintendo, make this multiplayer game a reality!