18 replies to this topic

[Matthew]

Is it unhinged to design dungeons where there are more small keys than locked doors?

 

What about designing dungeons where some keys are optional?

 

Thoughts?

[Ether]

It does feel kind of unhinged. Like...more Classic than GBC? It's not automatically bad but it'd change expectations.

 

I think having extra keys would make me paranoid that I was missing things. (Unless they could be used outside of the dungeon; I could see it being pretty cool if there's locked doors in the overworld. But if doors never showed up I'd get super paranoid that you were pulling something like Isle of the Winds did where you need all the leftover keys at the end and you're screwed if you didn't get them. Please don't do that.)

 

Some games do have dungeons where some keys are optional! I think it happened a few times in Moosh's 7th Quest. (This also made me paranoid.)

[Professor Bedwetter]

I have always thought the Z1's extra and buyable keys were a mistake. I am willing to try a quest that could be built around this conceit is possible, but it didn't do much for Z1 and evidently the zelda creators agreed. I think dungeons work best as self contained punctuations on the landscape, and extra keys defeat the purpose.

[Shane]

making zelda quests is pretty unhinged bth

[Shane]

On a more serious note, I think it worked with Zelda 1 but anything more complex probably wouldn't work. I think being able to skip locks like in Link to the Past (Misery Mire) or Majora's Mask (Snowhead Temple) is a little more interesting as a concept.

[Dark Ice Dragon]

speaking of first quest...the level 2 can be completed whitout use all keys, just place the bombs on the right places... always liked have few spare keys..so more than have more keys than doors, i will like a quest that let you spare few whit a bit of strategy

Edited by Dark Ice Dragon, 01 November 2022 - 04:14 PM.

[Anthus]

I don't think it's that unhinged. You could also just do it for one dungeon, and have that be the gimmick if you don't want to do it for the whole quest.

[Mitchfork]

Key Cavern in LA has optional keys and optional locked doors.  I think you always end the level with 0 keys by design but there are rooms that are permanently blocked off depending on how you go.  I felt like it basically worked and the entire dungeon gimmick is throwing tons of keys at you so it feels nicely intentional rather than just a weird design choice in an unrelated dungeon.

 

I think ending with unusable keys would feel pretty weird, though.  Like Ether I would feel kinda paranoid that something was missed.

I feel like you could have extra small keys be used for optional treasure in the dungeon though.  You'd have to work with the dungeon flow to support it, though.

[klop422]

I did make a dungeon where I had a trap room. That is, locked from the inside, but its only purpose is to hold a key. But that's specifically a troll room, and so might well be unhinged.

 

I think having the keys not match the doors in your dungeon will make a player worry ("where does this last key go?" or "where the hell is that last key?"), and that's less unhinged and more just bad design, but having optional stuff (including keys and locks) is definitely fine.

[Yuuki]

Is it unhinged to design dungeons where there are more small keys than locked doors?

Perfectly okay if you can only fit the same number of keys as there are locked doors in your inventory.

[Colin]

it would be pretty unhinged to make a dungeon with no doors whatsoever

 

_*rimshot*

Edited by Colin, 02 October 2023 - 01:33 AM.

[coolgamer012345]

I don't think it would be hard to make it work. You would want to set a precedent in the quest that having extra keys is normal, though, and not cause for alarm since this would break most people's expectations. I'm not sure how you could do that exactly, but some ideas are having the first dungeon very obviously have more keys than necessary. Another idea is having keys be sold (or otherwise be somewhere optional). Perhaps you could sell back extra keys too. Another idea would be marking on the map the number of locked doors vs the number of keys you have obtained (or that are present in the dungeon). You might be able to work it into the dialog somehow but that would probably be rather forced.

[Magi_Hero]

i think most dungeons are unhinged in general

most rooms dont have doors that require hinges and the ones you need keys for just disappear into the nether

[Phosphor]

It can work if the quest's design already sets the precedent of something like that. If just one random dungeon in an otherwise normal quest does this and makes no indication that there will be extra keys by the end, then yes, it's unhinged. The best way to go about this is to design something like Gerudo Training Grounds in OoT, since there's 2 keys in that mini dungeon that are technically not required. If you really hate the idea of having 2 extra keys in the end, you can reward the player for being smart with their key usage by hiding some non-essential items (like rupees, a potion, or some ammo) in a locked chest in the final room, while also making sure to indicate that the contents of the chests are non-essential for a 100% run. If you insist on having an essential item as the reward, it would be best to have it obtainable elsewhere in the quest (unless the quest is designed around the idea of 100% being impossible).

[Moosh]

Gonna raise the point that spare keys can be kinda good. Dungeon design where each key is paired with a corresponding lock encourages certain tendencies in players. You know the ones. The ones where they avoid "progress" in case there's something they've missed. When you're playing tug of war with players who try to metagame the structure of dungeon design it can be kinda tiresome. I don't think spare keys are necessarily the solution to this mindset, for some kinds of players it could even make it worse. But I like things that shake up design expectations and treating keys as a resource rather than a mandatory objective is one way to do that.