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The most underused sense in gaming is smell. This is not unnatural. The human axis of experience does not revolve around smell. Smell is the background music of our lives, never the action taking place on the screen. A particular smell may send us towards memory or thought, much the way different musical themes will do the same thing in a movie or opera. Consequently, this is what makes it so hard to implement in a game. In real life smell goes unnoticed so often that it only is noticed if there is a darn good reason for it to be. Bringing it up in a game can seem unnatural.

Mind you, we are not discussing the most unused sense in games, which is probably taste, but taste works on a different sort of angle. Generally taste does not get forced upon someone like smell does. In fact, this article is not even actually about smell, but smell as a part of a class of things that go along with any dungeon.

Last time I explained the importance of dimension. This time it is the importance of reality. Reality has been a fickle topic in the Dungeon Contractor series, but that should not be much of a surprise to any student of reality. What reality means or is changes on a frequent basis, depending on needs and circumstances, and in this circumstance reality is a crutch.

I've always had a special place in my heart for that saying.

Reality is a crutch for dungeon design. It is not the thing, it is not like the thing, but it exists for the sake of helping the thing do its own thing. Is smell a crutch as well? No, but smell is a part of a class of crutch items that all derive from reality. Mistake them for the thing itself and design will wander way off.

What things am I referring to? When's the last time you were in a dungeon? (See 1, below) It is nearly impossible to get to a dungeon nowadays, not because they never existed but because they need to be preserved and reconstructed. But even then, past the faux murals and the environmental controls there is often a residing feeling of unpleasantness. It must be sought for elsewhere in reality for most people: the humidity of an unfinished basement you look for the blown fuse in armed only with an oil lamp, the moose carcass you have to hide from the English soldiers in, the caving trip you took, back when you were of an age adults deemed it proper to take you places like caves, the pedestrian viaduct from Michigan Avenue to Oak Street Beach, at least back in the late eighties and early nineties.

In all of these, and as many other as people would care to cite, there are often smells that accompany them. Yes, in games we forget to bring up those smells, but more to the point is that none of those smells are anything pleasant. For an evolutionary explanation, our ancestors who survived were not the ones who thought mold had a nice bouquet, because they all died of vitamin D deficiencies. There is nothing pleasant about any of the environmental experiences of a dungeon. The cave cricket sings to annoy you.

The list of possible environmental ills you could throw at characters is formidable. Frankly, such a list is also better suited for a series discussing run-time issues as opposed to design. The design lesson to be learned is to remember the unpleasantness.

It does not need to be included, or rather, do not find the need to discern which corners have been pissed in how often because you need a smell map to go along with the regular one. If such a map fits with your concept, more power to you. Do keep in the back of your head this place of adventure is not pleasant without some serious remodeling. No one but a creature designed to be there is going to want to be there. I have equated dungeons to fun houses in the past, but these fun houses are a little more sophisticated. Perhaps they are the deserted place down the block that all the kids say is haunted; but most likely not, because there are real yet cartoonish enemies who jump out from the shadows. No, it is a superlative fun house, the kind you laugh as you exit but quietly vow never to go back to again. Keeping a general feel of nastiness in the back of your head will set the tone better than any number of glowing fungi.

Admittedly this time has been discussing dungeons in specific, as opposed to the concept of dungeon in general, and so this is not an idea that can be consistently applied. On the other hand, it is typical the place is supposed to be uncongenial, and it goes without saying that understanding the default theme for a place helps to square away whatever other themes are being laid on top.

Next time: where do those phosphorescent plants come from?

1 - The author would like to take this moment to point out he once went crawling through the tunnels under the Temple of Apollo at Delphi - with a candle stuck in his mouth nevertheless - not because it was especially dungeon-like but because he wanted to brag.