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Legend of Zelda-style dungeons come to D&D and other tabletop RPGs in puzzle adventure Aberrant Reflections

Rolled up a mirror.

Aberrant Reflections RPG artwork
Image credit: Jacob Fleming/directsunGames

A new tabletop roleplaying adventure aims to bring the puzzle-driven dungeons of The Legend of Zelda to the likes of Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs.

Aberrant Reflections was created by designer directsun as an attempt to make puzzles in tabletop roleplaying games more than an “afterthought”, drawing inspiration from the more complex puzzle-solving seen in the Zelda games and ‘Metroidvania’ genre, named for the Metroid and Castlevania series of video games. The designer previously released puzzley dungeon-crawl The Seers Sanctum, similarly inspired by the Legend of Zelda games.

“When I first started playing adventure games, I was shocked to find that most dungeons were not the polished puzzle boxes that I was used to from The Legend of Zelda games,” directsun said. “Most “puzzles” seemed like an afterthought that involved little more than a wordplay riddle.”

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The Aberrant Reflections adventure is built around a number of environmental puzzles, with players uncovering possible solutions as they pick up new items, information and lore about the mirror-themed dungeon. Directsun says that the puzzles are designed to encourage player creativity, with each of the dungeon’s more than 30 locations featuring various elements for characters to discover and experiment with as they explore.

As well as the dungeon and its puzzles, the book includes a variety of magical items and monsters to fill its rooms and corridors, illustrated by Jacob Fleming. The book is described as using a 'control panel' layout to help GMs and dungeon masters keep the action moving.

Aberrant Reflections RPG artwork
Image credit: Jacob Fleming/directsunGames

Aberrant Reflections is a system-neutral adventure, allowing it to be used with the ever-popular Dungeons & Dragons 5E or any other tabletop RPG system without extra modification or additional prep.

The adventure will launch a Kickstarter campaign on February 1st, looking to crowdfund both a digital release and a physical book. A release date is yet to be announced.

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Matt Jarvis

Editor-in-chief

After starting his career writing about music, films and video games for various places, Matt spent many years as a technology, PC and video game journalist before writing about tabletop games as the editor of Tabletop Gaming magazine. He joined Dicebreaker as editor-in-chief in 2019, and has been trying to convince the rest of the team to play Diplomacy since.

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