This round of development was mostly about making the dungeon easier to read without making it easier to understand. Slashie worked on the DOS-style font, visibility, and the visual language of objects, then moved on to the mobile interface and the way the game communicates its puzzles.

The DOS 8×8 font now has a taller viewport on desktop, targeting roughly 50 rows to match the space occupied by the larger font. The extra room is being used for a larger message area for now. Mobile keeps its compact layout of around 21 rows, and the small font also gets a pixel of spacing between characters.

Slashie also spent time making the map more legible. Trees now use brown instead of green, separating them from grass while keeping the dungeon’s limited palette. Chests and keys have their own hand-drawn glyphs, designed to work in both fonts. The merchant now uses an orange @, while the Tomb Guardian gets G, leaving creature letters for creatures.

The decision to use hand-drawn glyphs instead of characters is something I’m still considering, maybe I’ll have a separate 1 bit 8×8 tiles mode, honestly if the idea is to appeal more people, gotta give up some purity aspects.

Visibility changed too. The player’s sight range was reduced from 11 to 5.5 tiles, making unexplored territory more important. Monsters can see a little farther, at seven tiles, allowing them to approach from the darkness without giving them the overwhelming advantage of their previous 12-tile range.

The last set of changes focused on the mobile interface and dungeon secrets. The status header now remains visible above inventory popups on phones, including live health updates when using potions. Slashie also removed explanatory hints from doors, gates, and boss encounters. Messages describe what happens without explaining how to solve it, and keys no longer use colour coding to reveal which locks they open.

The underlying key-and-lock relationships remain intact, so levels stay solvable. Players must now experiment with their keys rather than follow colour clues. Doors, gates, levers, and buttons share a pale ironwork appearance, while keys use a consistent gold. The disarm wheels retain their colours for now, since their puzzle depends on a plaque that specifies the order.

The general direction is becoming clearer: improve readability and usability, but leave the dungeon itself mysterious. The interface should tell you what happened, not necessarily what to do next.