What is the best dungeon?

Lookin' for dungeon ideas. Idea me.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

How about a dungeon that, with the clever manipulation of tags, re-orientates depending on sundials-esk switches placed within it. The dungeon could benefit from a classical roman theme, or perhaps a hanging garden.

I always find my self basing my dungeons around an element, similar to Zelda. Although I have always wanted to base a dungeon around the hero(es) dreaming and the(ir) dream getting corrupted by evil.

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Happy RPG Makin

I really like mazes. The harder the better. I've done a fair amount of reading about mazes and experimenting with them. You really can create a lot of variation. For instance, teleporters, one way paths, locked doors, and keys, invisible walls, moving walls, multiple-levels, secret doors, etc.

A fun idea that I like to incorporate into a mazes is a "logic lance". This is a specific set of rules that will solve the maze. An example would be a maze that can be correctly navigated by always alternating between left and right turns at each intersection.

Unrelated to mazes, you could make a board game-like dungeon. The players must roll a die to move along a path. Each square could be subject to hazards or rewards like traps, battles, and treasures.

Though a bit dated, and though they're not really "dungeons" in the usual sense of the word, I've found the levels of this to be some of the best I've ever played.

...

Then again, that might be the child of the late 80s/early 90s in me talking...

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

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how about having a difficulty variation switch at the start? more loot, tougher foes. that sort o' thing. can't really think much different than the hordes of planned dungeons for AR-PUH-GUH! and another game o' mine.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

To me the setting is every bit as important as the dungeon itself, as atmosphere can change your perception of a restaurant. A lot of generic design choices can be forgiven if the dungeon is interesting.

For professional examples, one of my all time favorites was Majora's Mask's Snowhead, as it was frozen and covered in snow at the top, but was an active volcano at the bottom. As memory serves, it was essentially a large tube with a handful of rooms sprouting out, but the setting made it the most interesting to me. Come to think of it, the same could be said for nearly every post-OoT Zelda dungeon.

I guess what I'm trying to say is get creative with what a "dungeon" is. It can conceptually be anything, so long as there's a boss in there somewhere.

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—- So anyway, how are you?

I really like dungeons where you end up having to traverse it again, but backwards/upside down/whatever. Like the entirety of Symphony of the Night, or even certain temples in Zelda (such as the Forest Temple)

You could try to set up a dungeon such that the puzzles have different solutions based on the way you come in, and then you end up entering through the end (where the boss was) some other time, and have to get through again.

I remember that my first computer (a Win98) had Chip's Challenge on it... I still can't get the music from it out of my head. I've always wanted to do a dungeon based around that (actually RMZ's Mr.Triangles Maze reminds me strongly of Chip's Challenge).

Maybe the best dungeon.... is inside us all.

or maybe some kind of gimmick thing where you use a Big Chocobo item storage system to sneak keys past a key detector robot and to the doors that they unlock?

DOS game time!

Prince of Persia also had some brilliant dungeons, though I don't see how that would really apply to an OHR game. In PoP, the triggering of tiles, timing jumps, etc... played really well. I suppose it could translate to the OHR by making different areas of a dungeon only open up when certain switches are flipped. Add in PoP's danger of insta-death by making the wrong move and you could have an interesting dungeon. Then again, a lot of the things that made PoP work, really only work well with a platformer, so that idea might be out.

You could also go the way of dungeons in Ultima, where you can pretty much enter any dungeon you want at will (with some exceptions of course) but certain dungeons are just absolutely ridiculously difficult that members of your party are guaranteed to die (U5 anyone?). What made those dungeons interesting was the pressure put on the player to properly manage the party, resources, spells, etc... because the player knew how hard it was going to be. If you're going into the Stygian Abyss, doesn't matter how strong your party is, you're going to run into something just as strong, if not stronger. This, well for me at least, got me interested in the dungeons as they were extremely challenging.

Going off in a completely different direction, there's 7th Guest (which I know is not a DOS game nor is it an RPG, forgive me the first, and bear with me on the second). It's not an RPG, but an interesting mechanic I found was that the entire game takes place in pretty much one area. Solving puzzles (i.e. accomplishing certain goals in the dungeon) will open up other doors in Stauff's house. The interesting thing is, you don't always know what will open up what, so there's a great deal of exploration involved. This could translate into the OHR by having a large dungeon with certain areas blocked off until certain challenges are met. Just what challenges correspond to which areas would be vague, requiring the player to keep track of changes within the dungeon. Of course, certain there would be clues as to what does what so as to not completely baffle the player.

Anywho, that's prolly too much from me for now, cheers!

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

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