Dragonkeep

Same volume, different wall

Load Open Hall, then Snake Corridor. Both are sixteen cells, so identical floor area and identical volume. The corridor has more than twice the perimeter, so more than twice the wall.

Area does not determine perimeter. Here you build the counterexample, then walk through both and feel the difference.

Surface area is not additive

Load Two Rooms Apart: two 3×3 chambers, A = 18, P = 24. Now Two Rooms Joined, the same eighteen cells pushed together into a 6×3 hall: A = 18, but P = 18.

Volume unchanged. Six units of perimeter vanished, because a shared wall stops being surface at all. Almost everyone expects both quantities to add.

The maze index is honest

For any shape of area A, the smallest possible perimeter is 4√A, achieved only by a square. So P ÷ 4√A never drops below 1.00.

That one number predicts how the level plays. Near 1.00 reads open and safe. Above 2.00 is blind corners. Add mist and it becomes the difficulty curve.

The square-cube law, felt

Double every dimension and volume goes up eightfold while wall area goes up only fourfold. A keep twice as big in each direction genuinely reads as more open, and that is the ratio doing it rather than a trick of the drawing.

You win by not killing it

The dragon cannot be fought. Strike it and it wakes; come within k open steps and it wakes. Either way you die.

You win by sealing it off with the bricks your party carries, then walking out while it still breathes.

Which makes it a minimum cut

“Is this level winnable?” is the fewest cells you must turn to rock to separate the entrance from the dragon, counting only cells outside the wake radius. The Creator panel solves it exactly with node-split max-flow, so the number it reports is the real one.

Proximity is path distance through open floor, not straight line. Bricking only ever removes floor, so distances can only grow — laying a brick can push a fatal cell out of range. You build your way to safety.

A gate you cannot answer from home

The warden asks about the room you are standing in. The play HUD gives you volume, wall area and height — never perimeter. To answer, you need wall = P · h and a division.

That is the test for whether a puzzle is bolted on: change the floor plan and a real question changes with it. A syllogism on a door would not.

Authored puzzles

Puzzles are records; the board holds references to them, so several cells can point at one puzzle. The editor reports what that costs — which puzzles are unplaced and can never be met, which have no answer and can never be solved.

Keep authored content for riddles and story. Anything asserting a fact about the geometry should stay generated, or it will quietly start lying the first time you redraw the floor plan.

The keypad runs the other way

A numpad has 7 8 9 across the top. The 1983 controller's keypad ran 1 2 3 across the top. They are vertical mirrors, so one hardcoded map is always wrong for somebody.

So bindings are data. Spatial puts forward on the top-middle key, where your thumb expects it. Original labels matches the cartridge overlay. Click any binding in the Controls panel and press a key to change it.

Beyond the pad

The arrow cluster always steers. . lays a brick, F enters fullscreen and Esc leaves it. The on-screen keypad is generated from your live bindings, so it cannot drift out of step with them.

Two health tracks

Swords and bows spend War; books and fireballs spend Spiritual. Monsters attack one or both, and a helper will step in front of exactly one blow before they are gone. Run either track to zero and the expedition is over.