Legend of Zelda: The Masquerade is a transformation game written in the DayDreamer engine by Fever Dreamer.
Welcome to the Kingdom of Hyrule. You are Link, the Hylian child raised in the forest by the Kokiri who grew up to become the courageous hero that ended the reign of the evil Ganon...or at least you used to be. You were sent back in time by Princess Zelda, giving you back your lost childhood. You told your friends of your adventures but few believed you. Luckily, among them were Princess Zelda and her father the king, which stopped Ganon from ever usurping the throne. On that Day, the King declared that day a Holiday. Almost the entire population of Hyrule gathers around a bonfire, celebrating the failed coup.
Years later, after your adventures in Termina, you brought back tales of their anual festival. Again, they did not believe you but they liked the idea of wearing masks on the night of the festival. It has now become customary to wear masks and later costumes on this hallowed night, thus beginning a new tradition: The Masquerade.
Today is the day of the Masquerade, which begins promptly at sunset; unfortunately the Happy Mask Salesman has not been seen in Hyrule since last year's festival; the entire land is ready for a party without a single mask. It seems a tradition is about to die....or is it?
You awaken in your bed hearing a knock at the base of your tree.
You meet the postman and accept a job at the Happy Mask Shop, renting out masks in a hurry as the festival is tonight. You quickly make enough money to rent a mask for yourself and take a nap. You awaken and prepare for the party but then you find out that something is up with the masks and have to save the people of Hyrule from themselves. While most masks are harmless, some must be dealt with before something horrible happens. Having prevented a massacre at the festival, you find out how to unmask them and that is when the fun really begins.
It is short but quite entertaining, and you have to play it multiple times and save the game to get all the endings, which extends its duration.
I have tested it on Windows 10 22H2 (and one of the first versions of Win10 from 2015) with Java 8 and it works perfectly from start to finish. Those who have problems with DayDreamer is because they usually use newer versions of Java. and like all languages of its kind, every time the major version grows, compatibility with code written in previous versions decreases.
Maybe I'll do some port in another engine like RenPy or using my own engine in SDL since the game is quite entertaining and deserves more people to try it but with the incompatibilities of the engine It is limited to a somewhat small group, but without the code I couldn't be sure...
For now I would recommend trying DayDreamer with some old Java version to be able to play it, although I cannot guarantee that it works with all versions of Java. I use it with the OpenJRE 8 and the JRE included in the OpenJDK 8.
Edit: I use DayDreamer v9.3
Fever.dreamer has stated that the engine was abandoned due to compatability issues with Windows. This unfortunately means that most people will be unable to play. I tried on an old Windows 7 machine and still couldn't get it to run which is sad as I am very interested in this game in particular.
Could not figure out how to use the custom engine. I reconmend you skip this one unless you want an IT headach
One of my favorite games on the site, the endings are great even though they often have no more than 3 or 4 pictures, and there's a full walkthrough to get every ending in the forums too if you don't wanna go through finding them yourself. The engine is a bit wonky but it's not that bad.
In my mind, this game is one I kind of hold in my heart for being the first game I played while getting introduced to the site. It's one I find most memorable and one of the few I keep coming back to.
At its core, its not much different to Twine Choose your own adventure games. Because it effectively is that sort of game. Using a game maker that might be a little confusing at first, I feel as if it was made using Twine today, it may get more appreciation for what it is.
Personally there's a few fever dreamer games I quite like but I always find a fondness for them.
I am of the mind that though the game engine is a bit odd, it's still a fun experience and a game that isn't too confusing once you understand how to get around the daydreamer engine.
