Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…Ruins of the Reptile Regent

A dungeon by Vanessa Nairn (with cute art by Pippa Hobbs), low-level
Written for B/X
  Snail Song Studios is a cute name. This is a one-page dungeon with nine keys for eleven rooms (?) neatly arranged on a clean map with ugly but very functional markers for every NPC. Every type of creature has stats and an illustration presented on-page. I’d say more about the presentation stuff but that’s all there is, we’re keeping this simple as can be.
  Our story, such as it is, is likewise very simple. The titular reptile regent is a Snake Person who’s set up in some jungle ruins, as you do, and attracted lizardmen retainers to raid nearby trade convoys with the evident plan of “Raid Traders -> ??? -> Restore Ancient Empire of Reptiles”. That’s leaning pretty hard on the middle part but this Underpants Gnome has given us plenty of reason to knock over his ancient temple ruins and take all his stuff while murdering all his guards. Dude, it’s a little jungle adventure site, nobody needs a novel.
  Yeah, what I liked was that simple directness. So. Many. Adventures. Muck. This. Up. Beyond that, I like that there’s some thought that’s been given to having personalities to interact with beyond the “they attack” lizardmen, most of what is encountered here will be hacking but merchant captives get freed along with a Standard Issue Prick Elf, plus there’s a giant snake that’s just sort of chilling and wants to eat anything other than a giant toad. There’s not a lot of valuable intelligence that any of these parties have to offer, but hey, players like talking to NPCs. Some decent thought was given to interactions with the environment beyond the stabbing, like a statue with gem eyes that can have the eyes safely retrieved from the mouth, but triggers a gas trap if taken from the front. Then those gem eyes can be put in another statue to open a secret door. Good. A magic fountain that increases natural healing overnight but compels the drinker to sunbathe? Classic. Heavy treasure like a 1-ton statue being worth more intact than shattered is another good thing.
  Ah, but what can be improved? First, um, finish keying your map, there’s a whole leg that is marked but unkeyed, which would be forgivable if it was just a monster zoo but there are secret passages here, and what looks like as a secondary ingress, plus a studying lizardman with a Web scroll…okay, I know all this which means the annotated map is working, but just a line or two of detail would help in running the area. It’s also overall a bit too densely-populated for its size, playing the lizardmen smartly will see the whole area chain-aggro into a single massive (probably lethal) fight. The map is also more linear than it first looks, with the whole thing really ideally run in a single order. All minor nits, however. More substantially, the treasure is a little stingy for number of hit dice here.
  It’s fine, best use case is to stick this thing into a jungle hex as a perfectly usable little adventure site. I’d double cash amounts personally and a random returning patrol might help a bit, but it’s solid as it is.
  Final Rating? ***/***** and that’s really about the highest you can get given scope and creativity. Well-executed little website, and a nod to Hobbs for those neat little sketch illustrations, too.