Gotta Protectors, the Nintendo 3DS sequel to Protect Me Knight, has a lot of things going for it. There’s retro charm, a wonderful localization, six playable characters, and a great assortment of official levels. But, it’s also rounded out by a rather robust map editor. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t do a wonderful job of telling you how to get to it and use it.
Instead of being a separate option on the title screen, the Gotta Protectors map editor is immediately available after you select “Fight” in the solo campaign, choose a character, then get to the “Choose Your Destination” screen. There, you’ll see two rows of maps. On the left, there will be general chapters going through the story. On the right, you’ll see “User” followed by groupings of 20. These are where you can store user created levels, either made by you or scanned in via QR codes. To start creating or playing someone else’s level, you need to select a group. An assortment of “Free Zone” placeholders await.
To begin making your own map, you select a “Free Zone.” This will take you to a blank space with a castle in the center. By pressing the a button, you are given the option to play, copy, make a QR code, delete the map, edit it, paste it, read a QR code, or go back. Choosing Edit will give you the option to edit the field and/or parts appearing on the map, as well as adjust the settings.
There are two good starting places when making a Gotta Protectors map. You could go ahead and choose Edit Parts to alter the placement of the Castle, your base and Princess Lola’s residence, and maybe place a few villages and fields around it. I recommend starting with Edit Field. That’s the option that lets you decide terrain, which can influence movement speed, set up blockades, and add general ambiance. In this section, the turf, water, bridge, desert, clearing, floor, sludge, and garden are all parts that can be traversed. The shrubbery can be walked through, but also hides you a bit. There are also water current tiles. As for walls, you can put up rocks, chasms, and general brick walls. The parts section lets you place treasure items, like barrels, chests, and vases, four different levels of starting barriers, six kinds of turrets, enemy generators with 48 kinds of enemies, a boss spawner with 19 kinds of bosses, an enemy turret, three colors of gates, three colors of paired teleporting doors, fields, villages, castles, and assorted props. In short, there’s a lot to choose from.
What’s especially nice is the level of detail that goes into the enemy spawners. Each type of general enemy has about four different varieties to choose from. You can choose the generator’s trigger, the level of enemies it spits out, how often these enemies will appear, how many it will allow on the map at once, if it has an infinite or finite supply of foes, what that might drop upon defeat, and what difficulty the generator will appear on. You can even set if rare enemies appear, at what frequency, and what sort of aberrations they’ll be. The boss option is a little less intricate, only letting you choose who shows up, what the trigger is, what level they’ll be at, and what item they’ll drop. Be aware that, while setting enemies, you’ll also have to keep the map’s general settings in mind.
This is the other important part of Gotta Protector’s map editor. In the settings, which appear on the field and parts menu, you can name the map, determine how fast the river’s tides may flow, assign the number of stars signifying difficulty that you feel is appropriate, get into the enemy count to choose how many of each kind of foe appears, determine the map’s skin, set the background music, say how much gold people start with, and determine what the gold drop level will be like. Again, it’s incredibly intricate. All of these details directly influence how it is played, allowing you to make a professional quality level.
Naturally, this is the point where I share a Gotta Protectors map I’ve made. Now, I don’t find it too difficult, but I would recommend playing this one with a friend. I’ve set it up in such a way that you really need one person manning the castle, with Princess Lola, while the other heads out into the world to destroy enemy generators. I have been able to solo it as an Archer, but I’ve also been playing the game for quite a while. I’ve assigned Riverside a three star rating, mainly because people playing smart and cautiously, especially with friends, shouldn’t have too much trouble.
Going forward, you may want to keep an eye on Gotta Protectors’ Miiverse community for additional maps. It’s a little sparse at the moment. All I’ve seen are two maps from Zurashii, but more should appear as people start getting into the adventure.
While Gotta Protectors doesn’t come right out and tell you to go ahead and try making maps, or even offer a tutorial helping to walk you through your first one, the editor is absolutely something you should try. It’s an incredibly robust creation tool that’s very intuitive and allows you to make maps on par with the ones you’re going to actually find in the game. All of the sittings are there to possibly make something great, then share it with others via QR codes.
Gotta Protectors is immediately available for the Nintendo 3DS.
