TheZZAZZGitch Explains Mystery Dungeon Generation

We’ve linked to TheZZAZZGlitch’s videos before, their obsession with the Pokémon and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games is both admirable and somewhat worrying. The video I’d like to point out today is this one on the dungeon generation in the first Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game (19 minutes), which basically lays bare the entire scheme by which nearly all Mystery Dungeons construct their procedural death labyrinths. I’ve played quite a few Mystery Dungeon games, including nearly all of the many versions of Shiren the Wanderer (Rainbow Labyrinth is the only one I’m missing), and these dungeon level types keep coming up again and again. I’d be very surprised if essentially the same code, or close to it, wasn’t used in all of them. The beginning of the dungeon generation explainer is at 5:03. One interesting thing is that the dungeons generated by the various routines often create maps that can be seen as variations upon the dungeons from the original roguelike, Rogue itself. Rogue used a…