agreed that keys and exit door cards seem to be doubled to do nothing interesting. perhaps keys are tk unlock a treasure chest for loot instead?
It definitely affects the gameplay: If the exits are always unlocked, then you can get sometimes lucky and have the option to leave from the very beginning. If you need *both* the exit *and* the key, then it's much less likely that you'll be able to bypass an area prematurely.
If that's desirable--to force the player to confront some of the dangers before they move on--then it could become an explicit requirement:
A strong way to do this would be to have the exit appear only after all of the monster cards have been defeated.
A weak way to do this could be: The door is always visible, but it remains magically sealed until a blood sacrifice has been paid. The blood sacrifice might equal 75% (or 50%?) of the total health points of all the monster cards. Once the requisite blood has been spilled, the magically-sealed door opens and the player is allowed to leave. If the player is *really* desperate to get out, perhaps they could spill their own blood instead--to add some strategy to the game? (Sometimes all of the monsters get activated at once, and then it might make sense for a player to sacrifice most of their own health to open the door, rather than be killed.)
But the keys work, too. The keys *do* make it unlikely that the player will be able to immediately bypass an area.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I've noticed that I generally want to clear the entire dungeon in hopes of finding food or weapons, but not always: sometimes I know there's only misery left, and then it can be really helpful to have an unlocked door to flee through. You can sometimes get that unlocked door with your key/door system, whereas a blood-quota system would *never* give you an escape route until you've fought the monsters. I think the keys are working as intended.