Back in May last year we saw the announcement of Skyward Sword HD’s very own randomizer. For those not in the loop, a randomizer takes the base experience of a game and swaps around various aspects to make a unique playthrough. What exactly is shuffled will vary from game to game, but it usually consists of moving around key items, with progression coming as you gradually find these items and can use them to access new areas.

The 1.0 release was already fairly substantial, shuffling everything from chests to gratitude crystals, dungeon rewards, and even stamina fruit, for one of the most fun randomizer experiences I’ve come to play. Since then we’ve had a number of smaller updates aimed to fix the various bugs that have been reported, with the development team steadily working behind the scenes to add new features and locations.

Beedle's items may be random, but it doesn't mean they'll be good...​

A lot has changed for the 2.0 release, with an assortment of new options being made available. The big hitters to me are the ability to randomise Beedle’s Airshop, putting the rupee-rich economy to use, as well as the Dusk Relics in Silent Realms and the Tadtones from Flooded Faron Woods. On top of these minigames see a revamp, allowing you to set a difficulty to receive a reward item for those who perhaps enjoy things like Pumpkin Archery, but don’t quite want to go through its gauntlet.

Looking beyond new locations though, 2.0 also adds experimental support for using other mods with the randomizer, while also shrinking down the output patches by approximately 95%. The latter is particularly useful for those who might want to generate multiple seeds and switch between them without needing to go back to a PC.

The randomizer app also doubles as a tracker for those who don't know the game inside out!​

There’s a good chunk more to this update, and you can look at the full list of new locations and changes on the project’s GitHub page, as well as a download for the latest release. With the randomizer being playable both on official hardware and emulators, there’s no reason not to give it a go!

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Discord Server

 

[Robert Newbie]

"Skyward Sword HD Randomizer gets..." (Holds breath)
"... huge 2.0 update" (Sigh of relief)

Kudos to the devs. I've never played through Skyward Sword, but if I ever do, it's nice to know I can vary up the gameplay on a second round.

EDIT: I forgot to put "Randomizer" in the first line. Joke fixed.

 

[Bladexdsl]

nintAPPLE will leave this alone until the SS HD remake is officially ported to the shitch-U. Than boom it will suffer the same fate as the botw randomizer.

 

[Quore]

Randomizers are really fun to play, specially when you're already used to the game, i had so much fun playing GT4 spec2 with randomizer

 

[SDA]

Don't randomize the title of the game.

 

[The Catboy]

I expected bad news, glad it’s just news

 

[isoboy]

This game was never fun and I finished it once.

 

[cearp]

Cool, I liked the game apart from that weird "siren"(?) thing where those things chase you, horribly stressful!

 

[Scarlet]

Cool, I liked the game apart from that weird "siren"(?) thing where those things chase you, horribly stressful!

Yeah I personally disable the Silent Realm rewards when I randomise the game lol. Just a bit stressful.

 

[BaamAlex]

Don't randomize the title of the game.

The Legend of Skyward - Hold your Breath of the Wild.

 

[Viri]

I need to beat this game some day. I tried it once on Switch, got like 20 minutes into the game, got pissed off at the controls when fighting the first Deku Baba, then dropped the game. lmao

I think this, Zelda 2, and the DS games are the only mainline Zelda games I never beat.

 

[SDA]

The Legend of Skyward - Hold your Breath of the Wild.

Nice try, but this title doesn't sound randomized at all.

 

[wurstpistole]

When I read about those randomizers, I always wonder how they make sure that randomly allocating important items will not just softlock you at some point, because you just cannot progress beyond a certain stage without having a very specific item and that being put further down the road by the randomizers.

 

[HylianLZ]

When I read about those randomizers, I always wonder how they make sure that randomly allocating important items will not just softlock you at some point, because you just cannot progress beyond a certain stage without having a very specific item and that being put further down the road by the randomizers.

Basically, they put conditions on each "check" with what items are required to get it, then apply "logic" to what can go in what check, so that doesn't happen. There's also "no-logic" options, and they can absolutely result in stuff like requiring clawshots to get a chest only normally reachable with clawshots, encouraging the use of glitches or creative ways to get to it.

 

[regnad]

When I read about those randomizers, I always wonder how they make sure that randomly allocating important items will not just softlock you at some point, because you just cannot progress beyond a certain stage without having a very specific item and that being put further down the road by the randomizers.

Same here. I have never played a randomized game, but I’d assume with standard Zelda games it would be game breaking nine times out of ten unless this is somehow accounted for.

For those that have played randomized Zeldas, has this been your experience?

 

[Greninji88]

I expected bad news, glad it’s just news

Not even good news?

 

[The Catboy]

Not even good news?

Skyward Sword is mid, news around it is just news to me

 

[Scarlet]

Same here. I have never played a randomized game, but I’d assume with standard Zelda games it would be game breaking nine times out of ten unless this is somehow accounted for.

For those that have played randomized Zeldas, has this been your experience?

The message above yours explains how it works pretty well. It’s worth adding that a lot of randomisers also have a “no logic” option that disables all of that though and allocates things truly randomly. With that setting you can end up with truly unbeatable games.

I know there’s a decent following for that though in games that have a lot of glitches like Ocarina of Time. MajinPhil comes to mind if you’re interested in watching how that kind of seed can play out:

 

[VinsCool]

The message above yours explains how it works pretty well. It’s worth adding that a lot of randomisers also have a “no logic” option that disables all of that though and allocates things truly randomly. With that setting you can end up with truly unbeatable games.

I know there’s a decent following for that though in games that have a lot of glitches like Ocarina of Time. MajinPhil comes to mind if you’re interested in watching how that kind of seed can play out:

He and ZFG are the best for Zelda randomizers on N64 honestly!
No Logic seeds are rarely unbeatable for these games, assuming you know how to break them with the most obscure glitches!

 

[rabidrabid]

Big fan of OOT randomizer, I'll have to check this out!