Key Takeaways
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The Legend Of Zelda
games feature a variety of terror-inducing dungeons designed with horror elements to keep players on edge. - From eerie atmospheres to terrifying enemies, dungeons like the Lightning Temple and Shadow Temple aim to evoke fear.
- Nintendo uses effective lighting, sound design, and realistic art styles to make dungeons like the Arbiter’s Grounds and Snowpeak Ruins haunting.
Dungeons have made a triumphant return in The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom, but they stick to a mostly family-friendly look and feel. However, with dungeons being pivotal to The Legend Of Zelda franchise, they have been designed in a multitude of ways, ranging from serene to horrific.
Nintendo has always developed The Legend Of Zelda games to have many ways to invoke horror in a dungeon, pushing the limit for a game for both children and adults. Using terrifying enemy designs, effective lighting, or simply proper sound design to keep the player on their toes as they are trying to solve puzzles or find a new item for Link to use.
8 The Lightning Temple
Mazes And Mirrors In An Egyptian-styled Dungeon
- Game: The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom
- Location: Gerudo Desert
While there have been multiple desert dungeons in the games, The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom introduced one that looks and feels straight out of Ancient Egypt with the Lightning Temple. The hallways of the temple are dark, requiring a touch to explore and detect the mummy-like enemies known as Gibdos.
From the many traps to the lighting, everything in the Lightning Temple is designed to keep the tension high. Dynamic shadows and animations can make the littlest things trick the player into thinking they are seeing a monster at the corner of their eyes, making the actual monsters even more terrifying when they appear.
7 The Forest Temple
Twists The Mind With Ghosts And Skeletons
- Game: The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
- Location: The Lost Woods
With something called The Forest Temple, one would expect it to be serene and beautiful. Instead, The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time subverts expectations by making it into a dungeon filled with ghosts, skull-shaped spiders, skeletons, and an eerie atmosphere that makes it feel more like an overgrown haunted mansion.
Even the boss against the Phantom Ganon feels akin to something seen in a haunted house movie. From beginning to end, The Forest Temple feels foreboding, which can be fitting, since forests in the real world can be just as terrifying as they are beautiful.
6 Arbiter’s Grounds
The Game’s Realistic Art Style Makes Poes Terrifying
- Game: The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- Location: Gerudo Desert
The Legend Of Zelda typically depicts the ghosts known as Poes as more outlandish and cartoon-like in design. Twilight Princess, however, is known for having a more grounded and gritty take on the characters and creatures of Hyrule. The Arbiter’s Grounds is a prime example of this by having what many consider to be the most terrifying design for the Poes seen yet.
These Poes are only visible when Link takes advantage of the game’s gimmick, becoming a wolf and entering the Twilight realm version of the Arbiter’s Grounds. The Twilight version is much darker, making the already ruinous dungeon terrifying for the player to explore and the Stallford boss is one of the more intimidating in the game.
5 The Shadow Temple
The Dungeon That Is One Big Haunted House Ride
- Game: The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
- Location: Kakariko Graveyard
The Shadow Temple from Ocarina Of Time is the most horrific temple of the game, designed to get under the player’s skin. It’s dark and gothic, featuring undead enemies and puzzles that utilize invisible obstacles and intangible walls. It is a temple that forces the player to slow down and take their time, or the horrors of the temple will get them killed.
What helps enhance the chilling atmosphere of the Shadow Temple is that almost always, there is a sense of being watched by the mysterious entity controlling the dungeon. It may not be the hardest boss fight, but Bongo Bongo’s appearance is enough to creep out first-time players at least.
4 Snowpeak Ruins
Horrifying History Told Through Mystery And Suspense
- Game: The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- Location: Snowpeak
A lone ruined castle in the middle of the snowy mountains is already an eerie sight, but the inside of Snowpeak Ruins is one of the most mysterious dungeons of The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess, one of the more divisive Zelda games. It’s an example of less is more, with the use of ambient noises and music to instill a sense of solitariness and unease in the player.
Visual storytelling is the key component of Snowpeak Ruins, with the dungeon’s history being a mystery, but if the player pays attention, they can piece together at least an idea of what happened. It makes an already ominous location even worse, especially once the kind and mysterious character Yetta transforms into a disturbing boss monster.
3 Ancient Cistern
A Shocking Dungeon Of Drastic Opposites
- Game: The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword
- Location: Lake Floria
Nintendo deceives any beginners of the game with the Ancient Cistern in The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword because the upper level is beautiful and pristine. However, the lower level is a dark and dreary abyss of pollution that can curse or kill the player if they make one mistake.
The drastic change in tone and visuals can throw off any player, which is an overall theme for the Ancient Cistern. Everything is about opposites: light and dark, peace and chaos, yin and yang. This is even reflected in the creepy boss, which has a beautiful golden doll-like exterior with a dark and slimy interior that keeps the player on edge with its movements.
2 Thyphlo Ruins
Anything Can Be Lurking In The Pitch Blackness
- Game: The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
- Location: The Lost Woods
Similar to the Lightening Temple, the Thyphlo Ruins from The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild rely on darkness to frighten the player. The difference is that the Thyphlo Ruins are pitch black, with no lighting at all aside from Link’s torches, making it quite a challenge to traverse the labyrinth of trees and fight the creatures waiting in the shadows.
It’s not horror in the traditional sense, as the monsters and scenery are technically not that different from other locations seen in Breath Of The Wild. However, it’s the inherent fear of the unknown and darkness that most humans have that turns Thyphlo Ruins into the stuff of nightmares.
1 Bottom Of The Well
The Dead Hand Still Haunts Gamers’ Nightmares
- Game: The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
- Location: Kakariko Village
Despite it being only an optional dungeon in Ocarina Of Time, the Bottom Of The Well in Kakariko Village made an impact on many gamers. Unlocking the Lens Of Truth helped in future puzzles, but it’s the enemies that stood out the most, from the screaming Gibdos that make Link freeze in place to the unsettling Dead Hands.
With many appendages that stand out of the ground to grab Link, the Dead Hand is a long-necked demonic creature that fits in one of Clive Barker’s stories. The way it wiggles toward Link and then extends its jaws to bite him, while players only have a limited time to break free, has fans being haunted by the Dead Hand even to this day.
