The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is celebrating its 20-year anniversary today, January 10, 2025. Below, we look back at how the team came up with a playful sense of scale as its central hook.
The Legend of Zelda series is filled with dynamics that stretch and alter the world of Hyrule. Whether it be going back in time or into a realm of darkness, these add a new element of exploration that you wouldn’t see in a peaceful Hyrule. The goal with many of these design choices was to inspire wonder–to give players a reason to explore familiar areas they’ve seen several times before. The Minish Cap’s shrinking feature is one of the best examples of The Legend of Zelda designers achieving that goal.
Recent games like Tinykin, It Takes Two, and Grounded have explored what it’s like to explore the world while tiny, but few have created the dichotomy that The Minish Cap had with its shrinking feature. It encouraged fascination with the mundane–anything and everything could be hiding Link’s next discovery.
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