Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Player Builds Bizarre Seahorse…

Summary

One Tears of the Kingdom player created a majestic flying seahorse machine.
Their curious contraption serves as another testament to the immense freedom offered by TOTK's building system.

One inventive The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player has recently designed an unusual machine shaped like a giant seahorse. The footage of their bizarre-but-formidable bony fish recreation later made the rounds on social media, adding to the still-growing list of astonishing Tears of the Kingdom community creations.

Although the latest Zelda game doesn't force its players to engage with its Ultrahand mechanics beyond solving some fairly simple puzzles, its building system is extremely elaborate and conducive to creativity. Many players have hence been finding a lot of joy in experimenting with various Tears of the Kingdom applications of Ultrahand ever since the hit game debuted in May 2023.

Tears of the Kingdom Player Creates Majestic Flying Seahorse

Another testament to this trend has recently materialized in the form of a majestic Tears of the Kingdom vehicle shaped like a seahorse. The contraption, designed by Reddit user Osh-Kosh-Ganache, consists of two balloons, three Colgera Jaws, and some strategically placed Zonai Fans, among several other parts. So, although its overall shape is primarily inspired by the anatomy of a seahorse, the machine itself is actually meant to fly. And fly it does, as seen in its brief video demonstration that Osh-Kosh-Ganache shared in late September 2024.

The machine's likeness to a seahorse is far from the only impressive thing about its design. Quite a bit of engineering ingenuity went into making sure its function matches its form, with Osh-Kosh-Ganache's use of two balloons allowing them to end up with a vehicle that can also hover and perform a controlled descent. To do the latter, the pilot only needs to temporarily step away from the Zonai Steering Stick in the middle of the contraption in order to extinguish the flame inflating its lower hot balloon. This causes the machine to gradually start descending, and is also the mode of operation used for safely piloting it on the ground while it's hovering.

Since the seahorse-shaped apparatus only uses a few fans and some lights to facilitate The Depths exploration, it is fairly energy-efficient, and can thus be useful even for players who don't want to spend a ton of time on upgrading Energy Cells in Tears of the Kingdom. It also seems to use fewer than 21 components, so there's theoretically enough room for it to house a weapon or two, though that would require some careful balancing to avoid disrupting its aerial stability.

Anyone who loves tinkering with Tears of the Kingdom's building mechanics might also enjoy Echoes of Wisdom, the next Zelda game that's scheduled to arrive on September 26. While it doesn't mimic TOTK's gameplay, Echoes of Wisdom places a big emphasis on summoning and combining copies of objects, with these titular Echoes allowing for a lot of creativity in how players approach navigation, puzzle-solving, and combat. This makes them conceptually similar to the role Ultrahand plays in the 2023 Zelda game, suggesting they could appeal to the same type of players.

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Adventure

Action

Open-World

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OpenCritic Reviews: Top Critic Avg: 95 /100 Critics Rec: 97%

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Released: May 12, 2023
ESRB: Rated E for Everyone 10+ for Fantasy Violence and Mild Suggestive Themes
Developer(s): Nintendo
Publisher(s): Nintendo
Engine: Havok
Cross-Platform Play: N/A
Cross Save: N/A

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the sequel to the beloved open-world adventure, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This installment once again sees Link and Zelda battling to protect Hyrule from falling to Ganondorf. This new adventure takes place in the same land of Hyrule as Breath of the Wild but sees something called the Upheaval, which allows link to travel to Sky Islands, as well as deep into the Depths beneath Hyrule. Players can use special abilities to fuse together weapons, and build items to help them progress through the release.