Koholint Island
As a fun project, I set out to make the entire map of Koholint Island from the Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening in Pokopia. I tried to be as true to the overworld as I could, making each tile match the in-game map as closely as I could. Some liberty had to be taken for some things like cliff lengths and fitting staircases right, but the end result is pretty dang close. I had to be creative with some parts (especially dungeon entrances!), but I did the best I could to match the game's designs. I gravitated toward the original Game Boy title for the msot part but added embellishments from the Switch remake to make things look a little more lively.
I don't have video capture capabilities, so I can at least share the project with you through screenshots.
The houses all used the Switch remake's housing for interior decoration. The houses in Pokopia are larger than those in Link's Awakening, so I may have spaced things out a bit more or added a few things to make the living spaces look more natural.
Of course, I didn't stop at just houses (because I am crazy and entirely too detail-obsessed)! All of the game's caves are present, and you can walk around the island freely using the paths found in the game. To make them all fit underground, caves had to be ridiculously shrunken, but I tried to keep key features in each to make them feel similar. It was a real struggle to fit them in alongside the dungeons! Most aren't shown here because they either look too similar to each other or they were too tight to take decent pictures in.
Here are a few shots I took while making the island. I first chose a spot on Pallet and marked off where each screen was with some pillars. Then I made the ground for each screen level to its specific planned height. Finally, I went screen by screen and created the areas. Obviously this took a lot of planning, but I think the final result was worth the effort!
