Week 3 Session: The map-and-guidance workshop

Hand-drawing a micro-dungeon with real shortcut loops, then redesigning a cluttered map screenshot using visual guidance instead of icons

8 March 2027

Before the session#

Pick one area from any Souls-like you’ve played enough to half-remember. Don’t look anything up.

In the session#

Part one — the shortcut sketch. Hand-draw a micro dungeon: a bonfire (or equivalent safe start), a one-way door or elevator, a boss room, and at least two shortcut loops connecting them back to the bonfire. Every loop has to be something a player earns by surviving the long route first — a loop that’s just a second door with no long route behind it isn’t a shortcut, it’s a second entrance.

Part two — the guidance redesign. Take a screenshot of a visually cluttered game map (bring one, or use one supplied in the session) and redesign it using only visual highlighting — brightness, colour contrast, framing — to draw the eye toward the critical path on first glance, with no added icon, arrow or text label. If the fix requires a legend, it isn’t a guidance fix.

Afterwards#

Keep both artefacts. They’re the direct precedent for the map sketch half of the Final Project one-pager.