Meet the inventors making Hyrule’s most complicated contraptions
When Nintendo first started showing footage of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the hero of Hyrule navigated the world with simple vehicles and gliders. I never thought Link would end up cruising around in a hot rod that spews flames – and instead of killing the environment with gas emissions, that car goes old fashioned and just sets everything on fire. I also didn’t think I’d see Link flying around on a helicopter made of wooden planks and fans stuck together with magic glue, resulting in a creation that would barely pass inspection.
And yet those are exactly the kinds of inventions that the Hyrule Engineering Club, a Reddit forum that has over 20,000 members and is constantly growing at an estimated 1,500 members per day. In the posts filling this subreddit, Link has a mech suit that shoots lasers, a Segway, and a Star Wars podracer; you see designs for Bokoblin traps, Zonai rechargeable batteries and lawnmowers for Hylian rice harvesting. The inventors of the Hyrule Engineering Club are playing 4D chess while I’m still here building a big bridge.
The Hyrule Engineering Club was founded a few days earlier Tears of the Kingdom‘s release date by AJ Muncill, a pharmacy tech and Twitch streamer. In the days after Tears of the Kingdom‘s release, the community grew exponentially as players realised just now how flexible the game’s building mechanics were. Hyrule Engineering Club quickly became a place not only to show off creations, but also to engage in collaboration and collective creativity.
“The community itself is great,” Muncill told Polygon. “Every build post has a debate on how to make it better in the comments. It’s so much fun to see people coming together to help build bigger and better things. The speed of invention is amazing.”
It’s easy to see Tears of the Kingdom or another single-player game as a solitary experience, the player locked in and hunched over a Nintendo Switch. That certainly still holds true for some players, but the creativity and experimentation it took to discover all the little details of the game almost forced the need for a community; with a game this big and with so many variables, there’s no way for a single person to figure it all out on their own. The big brain of the internet has resulted in discoveries such as a rechargeable battery that uses shock transmitters just now how useful the Zonai stabilizer is, and much more.
“It seems like every day there’s a new revelation, like Oh! When you merge these, this happens! And you’ll see all these other people’s comments go, Wow! I bet you could use this to…“Taylor Roland, a store clerk and inventor of Link’s flaming hot rod and a mobile platform, Polygon said. “After a while you start to see all the different ways that people have used just that one trick to make a whole range of vehicles and weapons. I think finding a community around your favorite game can be a really fun and social way to get more out of it.”
Hyrule Engineering Club and other similar communities, such as the Zelda Builds build-and-blueprint repository, are built on common knowledge; sharing is essential. Many of the posts contain detailed instructions on how to build out the device into your own version of Hyrule, as well as ideas for improvement or iteration.
Moreover, there are plenty actual engineers who have become Hyrule engineers in these communities, people who tug at the incredible physics of Tears of the Kingdom to make inventions that are useful, impressive, and downright stupid – sometimes all three at once. Reddit user Paradox_Guardian, who asked to use their online address, is an electrical engineer who credits their background with the “creativity” and “tenacity” to see problems through to the end; it’s a process they’ve used for several of their creations, such as the Hylian Rice Lawnmower and fan-powered launcher.
“In Breath of the Wild, I’ve learned that when you have a goal in mind, there’s almost always a way to make it work,” said Paradox_Guardian. “Sometimes it doesn’t take the form you initially expect, but a solution can be found for almost every problem. I’ve brought this mindset into this game and I’ll keep it in mind as I experiment.
The lawnmower took about an hour of tinkering to get started, they said, starting with the real-life equivalent and working from there. The launcher took about three hours of experimentation; it is a more accurate and fast moving device. The idea for the launcher came about after Paradox_Guardian noticed that various objects in the game “take on a certain direction” when Link picks them up – with a fan, for example, the back of the fan will always face the camera, they said. The transition to that position is quick, but it’s there, and that move can be used to blast Link into the air, at least in the launchers they’ve built so far.
“I’ve noticed that when you pick up the object (in my case, a fan) you get a quick, controlled rotation,” said Paradox_Guardian. “For the rest of the trick, it was just a matter of finding the right positioning and jumping at the right time to make the launch work.”
It’s a lot of work, but super satisfying when it goes well – and when it’s celebrated by the community. But not everything goes perfectly, and sometimes that’s where the fun lies. Paradox_Guardian’s advice is not to give up, even if things go wrong time and time again. And as for the mistakes, enjoy.
“Don’t be afraid to let a dubiously constructed monstrosity rip every now and then,” they added.