I love these things.
Chances are, you’ve played through a game and thought “I could’ve done X better”. And that’s where game creation software comes in. Oftentimes, however, it’s expensive, and you’re still required to know an awful lot about coding; not great if you just have an idea and no background in computer science (i.e. you’re a dummy like me). Solarus, however, covers an awful lot of what it takes to make a Zelda-like game. Mostly since it was built to make a Zelda fangame. As the engine’s Team page goes:
Solarus is developed by a team of Zelda-lovers on their free time, as a hobby. It begins back in time, in 2002 to be exact, when Christopho, the creator and main contributor of Solarus, created a website for its first game : Zelda-Solarus, still active today. It was a way to promote the first version of Mystery of Solarus, which he made with RPG Maker. As time passing by, the website and its forum grew, and began to be a place not only for French Zelda-like game makers, but also Zelda-lovers since it was also a general Zelda website with walk-through, reviews, resources and news. Christopho decided to rework its first game in C++, and Solarus was born. So it was decided that the engine needed a website for itself. Today, both websites co-exist.
While the engine doesn’t offer any Zelda resources by default (that keeps them on the right side of Nintendo’s lawyers), you can download a Link to the Past resource pack. It all seems pretty user friendly, although you do need an understanding of Lua. On the flip side, Zelda Classic is far more simple (I dabbled with it years ago), but offers fewer tools in comparison. So if you ever wanted to make a Zelda-like game, you’d have to look far and wide to find something as sophisticated as Solarus.
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