Dungeon Design: Iron Mountain

Iron Mountain was one of my first dungeon ideas I came up with. Even before I had the plot to Chapter 1 completed, I knew that I wanted to bait-and-switch Calamity Jane joining the party, and that Road Agents had stolen medicine vital to the people of Deadwood.  So with the idea in mind that this was meant to be a side dungeon, and the main dungeon-related content for Chapter 2, I went to work designing the lair of the Black Hills Bandits: The Iron Mountain.

To begin with, I should give a basic on my philosophy of dungeon design. While I could spent an entire Trailblazer Tuesday talking about my philosophy as a whole, the most important part is that I very much adhere to Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit's point of view that there are essentially three types of dungeons: Gauntlet, Lock-and-Key, and Puzzle Box. Being that this was the first proper dungeon of the game, and was something I wanted players to be able to complete with very little friction, I opted to design it as a Gauntlet.

 But even though I chose the gauntlet design, the dungeon still utilizes a number of aspects of design, meant to teach the player some of the key dungeon-diving elements of Trailblazer. One of the first things encountered in the dungeon is this treasure chest on a platform by itself, and a mysterious message when the platform is approached from below:

This platform burns itself into the player's mind, so when they finally reach the easternmost point of the dungeon and locate a Throw Rope, the next steps the player follows will be obvious. They'll have to backtrack out the front door, past a Campsite, and over to the platform. At this point, most players would have fought their way through nearly the entire dungeon, so the trek back is empty and low-stress, since there is likely little, if any, wandering enemies to worry about. This also means that they are likely low on resources, and so that campsite becomes a very temping prospect.

The party rests, recovers, and triggers all wandering enemies to respawn. Through the clever placement of two chests and a campsite between them, I've given players a hint that they may need to backtrack in future dungeons, and reminded them that resting causes wandering enemies to respawn.