A first demo of the game was released in 2015, but was subject to a cease and desist and copyright takedown from Nintendo, despite positive feedback from critics and fans.
Hobbyist developer Justin Sink took it as a challenge and began creating a GameMaker game that would let fans make Zelda levels, in the hopes that Nintendo would realize it was not as hard as they believed.
Sink was aware of Nintendo's reputation for cracking down on fan works, and had been prepared for the situation, setting out to create a new engine and artwork in order to relaunch the game as Legend Maker.
Mark Serrels of Kotaku Australia called it "pretty cool", but stated that he was not sure the game would have the same impact as Super Mario Maker if it existed as an official product, due to the effort involved to create an entire Zelda world.
[4] Meanwhile, Emanuel Maiberg of Vice said that the game made a "strong case" for the existence of an official Zelda Maker, noting that, like Super Mario Bros., it was 2D with a clear design language.