Small dungeon-crawler prototypes often grow sideways. We add rooms, enemies, loot, and UI before proving that one short run is understandable and worth repeating.
Before adding content, I like to reduce the prototype to six gates. A player should be able to pass all six in one three-to-five-minute run.
1. Orientation
Can the player tell where they are, where they can move, and what looks interactable without a paragraph of instruction?
This is not an art-quality test. Grey boxes are fine. The question is whether the route and the next point of interest are readable.
