A megadungeon only remains interesting when it’s both cohesive in its whole and distinctive in its parts. To return to that essay on aesthetic flaws, “whenever there are multiple forms of representation working together, there is the possibility of different aesthetic values about those kinds of representations clashing.” The smoothness of In Stars and Time greatly contributes to each loop feeling like an individual “floor” of something larger: every time something little changes, it feels sufficiently new. In contrast, each repetitive Diablo dungeon is alike in its structure and design, and since the differences mostly extend to visuals, I see that smoothness as a flaw.

The next step past this kind of repetitive design, or maybe a relative to it, is procedural generation; for instance, One Page Dungeon, which produces dungeon floor layouts and basic item descriptions. Using it feels like the place I eventually got to with my dungeon, when I ran out of inspiration: googling fantasy tropes or flipping through novels to imagine appropriate things to put in empty rooms. In other words, using it feels a little like cheating. With no shade to these kinds of tools – they do require human input, after all – I can’t not think of how people use AI to generate inspiration, a process that cuts off one’s ability to do so on their own.