So, uh... townspeople are going to have some tiny housing.

I can make some houses two-screens long, but this is going to be your one-room, average home.

The houses have always been small on the outside

It seems like it would fit quite well.

Well, here we go...

This is the land of Labrus. (more appropriately, the overworld section) It's a mere 6x6 screens, but a couple of warps lead off into sub-worlds. (such as the Zora's Domain) Of course, you also have to factor in dungeons... 6x6 is the max limit on map sizes. A mini-map detailing exit points and current location is always available on your inventory screen. Sections that haven't been visited yet will be indicated in gray.

A few notes: The black arrows indicate the direction of currents. These push Link in that direction. (the black arrows wouldn't actually appear in-game) The whirlpools are portals to Zora's Domain. The Triforce symbol, or Hero's Crest, unlocks various things when Link uses his harp in these areas. The one in the forest is simply a default warp point, where Link is transported, any time he plays the Hero's Etude. The two heart pieces are 2/4 available in the game, allowing the player to make a single, optional heart container.

Just mock-ups, currently. I'm not going to throw the tiles into a map editor until I decide how to go about representing certain events and objects. (e.g., movable blocks) Since there's so much to interact with, it's hard to represent this in editors like CalcGS. In the meantime, an image can at least represent where all these events and objects are located.

New mock-up. Working on ideas for how large bosses are going to appear within a single screen.

That looks very nice!  Great job with them!

Personally I prefer a minimalistic HUD like the first one you were using. With such small screen size I think its best if you are able to utilize more of the screen space. You could even drop it to just displaying hearts in my opinion, and add some transparency. That way, you get to utilize the whole screen. The mockups look good, I just don't want it to feel cramped. You'd have more space if you were to use 8X8, but then you'd loose detail. Another thought is that you could design the screens to be scrollable and eventually transition when you reach a certain point in order to give the illusion of more space. Just some thoughts.