You should play Mario Artist: Polygon Studio (Especially if you like Tears of the Kingdom)
THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY MADE ON COHOST AND HAS BEEN ARCHIVED HERE
Mario Artist: Polygon Studio was released for the Nintendo 64DD in late 2000, and its best feature is often overlooked by people browsing through random roms. This "baby's first Maya" 3D creation tool also includes a fully 3D open-world vehicle-building exploration game, all done in an otherworldly, unnerving, almost indie style.
If you are intrepid enough to happen across this game mode, titled the "Experimental World", a.k.a "Polygonecia", you can take a vehicle made in a parts editor to explore a surreal low-poly landscape that stretches out into forever. You start out with a basic vehicle template from a small number of starter parts, and slowly collect more as you explore the world. There's no combat, no weapons, and very little guidance. There are strange, alien creatures that can hunt you down like a wild animal seeking food, but you cannot fight them.
You are but a passenger in a world you were never intended to see, dear traveller.
This is not a space to be conquered, content to be completed. Polygonecia may contain the tools to see all of it, but this feels more incidental than a tailored experience. As you find them across your travels, you can outfit your vehicle with them to explore more and more of the world, with nothing but your curiosity as guide. Watching each sunset and sunrise on a digital Galapagos is a humbling experience unlike anything else I've played, and completely reshaped the way I think about digital spaces as a designer.
I won't spoil anything else about the game, because it is better experienced with as few expectations as possible. But if you are interested in what TotK is offering in terms of mood and mechanics, or if you are into low-poly, low-guidance, mysterious exploration games which break the rules of the genre well before it existed, I cannot recommend Mario Artist: Polygon Studio enough.
The game received a cartridge conversion and English translation by 64DD legend LuigiBlood, but part of me recommends playing through the game in your non-native language to increase the feeling of being lost in a strange world with absolutely no help. Don't look up a guide, just experience it on your own terms, and see where it takes you.
