Studying Dungeon Generation in Enter The Gungeon

Boris from BorisTheBrave.Com has recently shared an awesome article on the way Enter The Gungeon, an awesome rogue-lite game with a taste of Binding of Isaac, generates its floors.

First, it might appear that there are no specific rules and that it’s all about the random generation, but it appears that there’s more to it. The game’s floors just wouldn’t work right if that was all about random choices. Boris studied the game’s layouts step by step to find out that they have been carefully pre-authored. Below you can find a layout and a scheme used to generate it.

Courtesy of boristhebrave.com

Normal rooms are random rooms with enemies, hub rooms are larger rooms with several exits, plus there are reward and boss rooms. Don’t forget about the “connector” rooms without enemies and with an environmental hazard.

“There’s a handful of these layouts, called flows, per stage in Gungeon. The Hollow has the fewest with 4, while the Gungeon Proper has the most at 8,” noted the researcher. “They’re not generic — each is designed around a specific feature that you can notice with experienced play. This might be a gigantic loop, or an important multi-way fork, or having to travel through the shop to get to the end.” You can find the full list of layouts here.

It’s a really awesome study which covers clever game design mechanics. Make sure to check out the post here.