You stand before a stone archway with a set of stone stairs leading down into an oppressive darkness. You found this place quite recently as it wasn’t here before; it just appeared one day. And ever since then, you’re had this nagging feeling that you have to know what’s down there. So, you prepared. You acquired a light, a backpack, and a weapon, just in case. Finaly, you gathered your courage and descended into the darkness, into the unknown.
As you descend down the stairs, you notice the tunnel is giving way from damp stone bricks to glowing blue moss and luminescent crystals of varying colors. All lighting your way down until the stairs open up into a vast cavern as you reach the bottom. The cavern’s rough, jagged walls are covered in the moss and crystals, both converging around a pool of water in the back of the cavern. Approaching the pool, you see that it fed by a steady waterfall, flowing in from a large crevasse in the cavern ceiling. Sunlight leaking in, softly illuminating the space.
To your left you can see the cavern continue deeper into a room that appears to contain some sort of statue and to your right you can see that someone has setup camp by the water with a fire still smoldering in front of a makeshift shelter made of stacked rocks and moss.
What do you do?

Did this scenario capture your curiosity?
Are you curious to see what lies in the caverns ahead or what that shelter is hiding?
If so, then that is too bad. I unfortunately haven’t written anything more for this scenario. However, you now understand the crux of this manual and the driving force behind all that we will discuss in the chapters ahead; you now understand the curiosity of the unknown.

Curiosity has driven the human race for a grand majority of its existence. Curiosity drove us to see what would happen if we held raw meat over a fire, figure out the laws and forces that dictate the universe, and, most relevant here, explore every corner of the world (that isn’t below sea level). Though, despite having explored every patch of dirt of our planet, humanity still craves to explore the unknown. In order to satisfy their own carvings, some people choose to explore the abyssal depths of the ocean, some choose to work towards eventually exploring the infinite frontier of space, and some choose to play videogames; I am one of these people.

Ever since I first played The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess when I was a young apprentice, I’ve held an appreciation for dungeons and those who delve their depths. Dungeons to me have always been an entertaining way to challenge my mind while satisfying my curiosity to see what was around the next corner. As of writing this, my appreciation has only grown ever greater since rapid emergence the Souls-like genre and the recent advent of the King’s Field-like genre caused by it, both placing great emphasis on exploration and the more challenging aspects of dungeon crawling.

I am Conwizard, the great and powerful space wizard/massive video game nerd, and with this manual I wish to delve dungeons in-depth by analyzing them to see how and why they manage to capture the curiosity of spelunkers.
Before we begin our delve, however, let’s discuss just what dungeons are and how they came about so that we’ll be on the same page moving forward.