I Let Gemini AI Roast My Dungeon Design and It Filed 14 Complaints About Corridor Widths

Manaswi Mendhekar — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 11:47:43 +0000

This is a submission for the DEV April Fools Challenge

What I Built

DUNGEON LAB — the world's only peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to the rigorous scientific study of dungeon design.

You drag tiles onto a grid — lava pits, goblin nests, boss chambers, teapot rooms — and three Gemini-powered AI academics immediately lose their minds about it in real time.

It solves zero real-world problems. That is entirely the point.

🧱 Paint your dungeon with 15+ tile types
📊 Live fake metrics — Hero Mortality Probability, Goblin Wellbeing Index, Evil Density (evil/ft²), Lava Carbon Footprint
🔬 Three AI reviewers roast every tile you place in real time
📜 Submit for Peer Review — get a full fake academic paper with DOI, abstract, and a verdict stamp
🫖 Place the Teapot Room tile for a special RFC 2324 surprise

Demo

🔗 https://funny-blancmange-dba8c9.netlify.app/

Click any tile from the left panel
Click or drag on the grid to build your dungeon
Watch the right panel metrics go haywire
Hit 📜 SUBMIT FOR PEER REVIEW — you will probably be DESK REJECTED
That is normal. That is the joke.

Code

MANASWI-MENDHEKAR / dungeon_lab

🏰 DUNGEON LAB

Journal of Applied Dungeoneering & Subterranean Hazard Studies

Vol. 47 · Est. 1347 AD · ISSN 1347-DOOM · Impact Factor: 0.003 · Peer Reviewed (Mostly)

The world's only academic journal dedicated to the rigorous, peer-reviewed study of dungeon design Powered by Gemini 2.0 Flash. Completely useless. Deeply important.

🔗 LIVE DEMO → funny-blancmange-dba8c9.netlify.app

🎮 What Is This?

You build a dungeon. AI scientists lose their minds about it.

🧱 Place tiles — lava pits, goblin nests, boss chambers, spike traps, teapot rooms...
📊 Watch absurd live metrics — Hero Mortality Probability, Goblin Wellbeing Index, Lava Carbon Footprint, Evil Density (evil/ft²)
🔬 Get roasted in real time — three AI-powered academic reviewers react to every tile you place with pompous, unhinged scientific commentary
📜 Submit for Peer Review — receive a full fake academic paper with DOI, abstract, methodology critique, and a verdict stamp

It solves zero real-world…

View on GitHub

How I Built It

Frontend: A single index.html file — vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No frameworks, no build step.

Backend: Node.js + Express deployed on Render (free tier). Acts as a secure proxy so the Gemini API key is never exposed to users.

AI: Gemini 2.0 Flash via the Google Generative Language API powers two things:

Live reviewer reactions — every tile placed triggers a real-time roast from one of three AI personas with distinct personalities
Full peer review paper — Gemini generates a complete academic paper with title, abstract, methodology critique, statistical analysis, four reviewer comments, an Ethical Review Board ruling, and a verdict

The fake metrics are real JavaScript math — completely made up formulas presented with total scientific confidence:

Hero Mortality = traps × 13.1 + monsters × 9.2 + boss × 28
Goblin Wellbeing = 100 - traps × 14 - lava × 22 + rooms × 12
Evil Density = (traps × 2.2 + monsters × 1.9) ÷ total tiles evil/ft²

Prize Category

Best Google AI Usage — Gemini 2.0 Flash is the core engine of the entire experience. The whole joke only works because Gemini commits to the bit — it genuinely writes pompous academic prose, invents fake citations, and argues about trap thermodynamics with a straight face.

Best Ode to Larry Masinter — Place the 🫖 Teapot Room tile anywhere in your dungeon. The backend immediately returns HTTP 418 I'm a Teapot to all brew requests, per RFC 2324 §2.3.2. The peer review paper includes a full HTCPCP/1.0 compliance notice. Larry Masinter is cc'd.

curl https://dungeon-lab.onrender.com/brew
# HTTP/1.1 418 I'm a Teapot
# {"error":"I'm a Teapot","rfc":"RFC 2324 §2.3.2","blame":"Larry Masinter"}

Reviewer #4 considers the teapot room "mid." Reviewer #4 has been muted since 1347 AD. The appeal is still pending.

DEV Community: Manaswi Mendhekar