Top-down Action-Adventure (Zelda-like)

What it is. A top-down world of rooms and dungeons. You fight readable enemies with a small verb set (attack, dodge, a tool or two), collect keys and items that open the map, and best set-piece bosses. Combat is reactive: the enemy shows its intent, you answer.

Player fantasy / why it’s fun. “I read that and beat it.” The satisfaction of watching a wind-up, recognising it, and punishing it — plus the steady drip of a new tool that reframes every room you’ve seen.

Pillars

Readable threat. Every attack telegraphs — a flash, a wind-up, a ~0.45s tell — long enough to react. Reactive play is only possible if the threat is legible (FUN.md §4). system-telegraphs.
The hit has weight. Hit-stop, i-frames, knockback — a landed blow feels landed. But hit-stop must buffer inputs through its freeze or attacks “randomly” vanish (system-combat-model, FUN.md law 5/§4).
The map is a lock. Keys, switches, and items gate progress; a dungeon is a spatial puzzle whose solution is the tool you find inside it.

The loop stack

Scale	The loop
Moment	Read a wind-up → dodge or block → punish in the recovery window. Sub-second.
Encounter	A room of mixed `system-enemy-archetypes` — clear it by exploiting each one’s tell.
Session	A dungeon: rooms + a keyed lock puzzle + the tool that solves it + the boss that tests the tool.
Meta	New tools reopen the overworld; hearts/upgrades and secrets reward exploration.

Essential systems

System	Why it’s needed
`system-telegraphs`	Pillar 1. The wind-up window is the entire fairness contract of reactive combat.
`system-combat-model`	Defines the hit — damage, hit-stop, i-frames, knockback — and the input-buffer-through-freeze rule.
`system-enemy-archetypes`	A legible alphabet (skirmisher/artillery/tank/swarm) so rooms compose meaning, not noise.
`system-encounter-design`	Rooms as compositions of archetypes; pressure and pockets, clear exit lanes.
`system-boss-design`	The dungeon’s set-piece; phases and telegraphs that test the dungeon’s tool.
`system-grace`	I-frames on dodge, hit-stop buffering, wound-before-death — the reactive-combat grace canon.

Content & difficulty model

Telegraph budget first. Fix the tell duration (~0.45s baseline) and derive enemy density from it — enough space to read every threat that’s live at once. Overlapping unreadable tells are the genre’s core unfairness.
Keep exit lanes clear. Cover or pillars in a door row/column is a softlock — the containment/exit-lane rule (FUN.md §4). Author door lanes obstacle-free.
Escalate by combining archetypes, not by inflating stats. A skirmisher + artillery pair is harder — and more interesting — than a bigger-HP skirmisher. See system-encounter-design.
Gate honestly. Dungeon locks should be solvable with the tools available inside; the item you find is the intended key. Prove door gates open only when their key is held (both ways).

Reference wiring: a top-down steering + hunt-and-slash build proves the loop with a combat bot (walk, fight, telemetry: win time, hp floor, 0 deaths). Grep docs/API.md for the hit-stop / i-frame / particle primitives before citing them.

Signature-mechanic seeds

“X but Y” (process-the-twist) — bend the tool, the enemy memory, or time.

Zelda but every enemy remembers your last fight — the nemesis bend: a foe you fled comes back scarred and cocky. (mechanic-swap — see anchor-shadow-of-mordor)
Zelda but your weapon is also your key — the sword that opens the door is the one you fight with; upgrading it re-gates the map. (mechanic-swap)
Zelda but time only moves when you do — a Superhot dungeon; telegraphs freeze between your steps. (constraint)
Zelda but you can only hold one tool at a time — the loadout swap is the dungeon puzzle. (constraint)
Zelda but the dungeon is a single boss’s body — rooms are organs; the tool you find disables one. (theme + structure)

Common pitfalls

Unreadable combat. Too many simultaneous tells, tells too short, or no tell at all → the player can’t play reactively, only spam. Budget telegraphs first.
Weightless hits. No hit-stop/knockback/i-frames → combat feels like poking fog. And hit-stop without input buffering eats attacks — buffer through the freeze (FUN.md §4).
Softlocking door lanes. Cover in an exit row can trap the player with a live enemy. Keep lanes clear.
Dungeons that are combat corridors. Without the lock-and-key layer it’s a beat-‘em-up wearing a map. The puzzle of the dungeon is half the genre.
Stat-inflation difficulty. Bigger numbers aren’t harder, they’re slower. Combine archetypes instead.

Anchors

anchor-shadow-of-mordor — the nemesis system; systemic enemy memory that personalises the overworld’s threats.
anchor-dead-cells — tight, weighty top-down/side melee feel and the tool-as-key unlock loop.

Verify

Prove it with FUN.md §4 · Action-adventure — kiting-bot telemetry (win time, hp floor comfortable, 0 deaths); door gate proven both ways; containment every frame; hit-stop buffers inputs through the freeze. Design the readable fight here; prove it fair there.

Composes with

system-telegraphs — the readability pillar made mechanical.
system-combat-model — the shape and weight of a hit.
system-emergent-systems — nemesis-style memory turns fights into rivalries.