Zelda Easter Egg Hunt In My Front Yard
Tags: gamedev, ue4, hobbyprogramming
Published: 2020-11-24 16:22:22

{% youtube N9z7zWo5ANI %}

# The context around Game 1

This first game started as a result of me getting the ["Hyrule Historia"](https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Zelda-Hyrule-Historia/dp/1616550414), a large encyclopedia of all things Zelda, for my brother's birthday. Feeling lame just wrapping up a book and giving it to him, I decided it'd be much more interesting to create a sort of scavenger hunt that would ultimately give him a code to unlock a container that the book was hidden in. I hid a series of clues around the house and the last one led him to locked box with a USB stick on it, the USB stick had a note attached to it saying that the code to the lock was hidden within the contents of the USB stick.

Plugging the drive into the computer booted up what was unimaginatively titled (and what set the naming pattern for all future games 🤦‍♂️) "ZeldaMattBday2017".

# What is going on here??

Upon watching the video, you may have some questions. Such as, why are there eggs? Why do the eggs have the Soviet Union's "Hammer & Sickle" on them? etc. The great parts of these games rely upon the inside jokes we all share, that said, I'm going to do my best to give some context as to what is going on here:
- What is the goal of the game?
    - With my fantastic 2d art copy/pasting skills, I hacked together a 2d representation of my parents house. This is complete with parts of the neighbors yards, the red SUV in the driveway, and all our many bushes in the front part of our yard. Every Easter, we enjoy "Competitive Easter Egg Hunting" where we take turns finding silly spots to hide each other's eggs. Each of the eggs in the game are hidden in one of our Go-To spots, these include things like the mailbox, inside the gas lid of the car, the end of the porch, at the edge of the neighbors fence, and the greatest of all: in the middle of the yard where no one would ever think to look for it!

![My house in real life](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/7hf9fsyata09m3de0jlr.jpg)

- Why is there a triforce that makes a dog come and bark at you?
    - Hopefully my neighbors don't read this, but their dog is infamously loud and persistent (I retyped this several times and landed on something nicer sounding). It doesn't matter what hour of the day or night it is, if you approach our house or park the car, it will run over and start yapping and continue yapping long after you leave. The Triforce was merely a way to lure my brother over towards the neighbors house to trigger the dog barking.

- Why is Link blue? 
    - My brother's and I played a lot of ["Zelda 4 Sword Adventures"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Four_Swords_Adventures) growing up, this particular brother was the youngest so he always got the 3rd controller. The third controller in that game happened to map to Blue Link.

- Why is there a Hammer & Sickle on the eggs?
    - This will be a recurring theme in all 4 of his games. Simply put, he really likes Russia! He is not a communist, but we frequently make the joke that he may as well be since he has learned their language and loves studying their culture & history.