Dungeons in Among the Trolls
Dungeons are entered through portals and each tells its own story. Some exit where you came in, others drop you somewhere new, and some exits need something else before they work.
Dungeons are the places behind the portals, and the developers designed them as spaces with their own stories rather than as interchangeable loot rooms. Each one has a distinct identity, its own guardians, and an exit that may not be the door you came in through.
What a dungeon is
Stepping into one is described as putting your foot into an ancient tale — and finding out the fairy tale sometimes bites. They are hidden behind thick stone walls, away from sunlight, as old as the world itself. Inside, the design goal is a specific feeling: being lost in halls carved by invisible hands, where a faint glow, your tools and your intuition are the only guides.
The developers are explicit that the dungeons are not all the same:
| Dungeon character | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Shrouded in mystery | Exploration and reading, less brute force |
| Constant tension | Survival pressure, tight resources, attrition |
| Somewhere someone truly used | Environmental storytelling, lived-in spaces |
Getting in and out
You enter through a portal opened with a Portal Page. What happens on the way out is one of the game's favourite ideas:
- Some dungeons return you to the place you entered from.
- Others let you emerge somewhere else, through an alternate way out: a stone opening, a "different" fissure, a passage that feels like it has been waiting for you.
- Alternate exits are not always immediately usable. You will need something else before you can change your route.
That single design choice changes how you pack. If the exit might dump you across the archipelago, carrying food and water is not optional.
Guardians and the resource game
The secrets buried below have guardians of their own, and they made the darkened corridors their home. The developers describe these encounters as tests of fighting skill and resource management: attrition matters more than a single hard fight, which is why the demo's patch history is full of dungeon fixes — walls rendering too dark, arrows clipping broken barriers, barricades respawning without collision, a "Leave Dungeon" prompt stuck on screen, and food being added to the dungeon inventory specifically to stop stat-drain deaths.
A dungeon checklist
- Confirm you have the right Portal Page for the destination.
- Pack food, water, canteen refills, potions and a buffer of arrows.
- Expect the dark: the demo's walls-are-too-black bug is a reminder that lighting is a real constraint down there.
- Read the space. Rooms someone truly used are usually telling you something.
- Check the exit before you commit to it; alternate routes may need an item first.
- Bank what you find before you go back in.
How dungeons fit the story
Dungeons are where the protagonist's story starts to intertwine with old legends and long-buried truths. Each one is described as telling a specific story, and the goal of the design is that you uncover hidden pieces of story behind ancient walls. Practically: expect lore, not just loot, and expect the interesting parts to be at the edges of the obvious path.
Sources
- Devlog #4 "Into the Depths" (atmosphere, guardians, work-in-progress dungeon design): Steam news archive
- Devlog #9 (returning the way you came, or emerging elsewhere; alternate exits): Steam news archive
- Demo hotfixes #1 to #4 (dungeon bugs, food in dungeons, exit prompts): Steam news archive
Game imagery on this page is official promotional material, used for reference.
