Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io....Temple of the Bat Serpent

​A dungeon by Nate Treme, level non
Written for Knave
   This month is "pamphlet dungeons by Nate Treme and Shadowdark jam results" if the theme wasn't otherwise obvious. Yeah, I don't know either. Look, itch.io giveth, itch.io giveth more of the same. You know the deal, two pages designed to be printed out and folded. As usual, the fold pattern is different with every single pamphlet product. This one is a seven-room dungeon, for what its worth.
   I don't know what a bat-serpent is, but the locals are being troubled by one lately. A temple previously devoted to some type of goddess is now taken over by a eye-takey-outy cult who worship the bat serpent. Hate it when that happens to my mountain temples. The front part of the little zone is a temple area, the back part is a hidden cave lair zone, all good. I don't know WHY there's a pond in one of the caves with a mermaid, but hey, one more encounter for the pile. Fight eyeless things and defeat the demon bat-serpent then cheer for your victory over the forces of somewhat less metaphorical than usual darkness. 
   I'm a simple man. What I liked were the temple themes and how the mess-with-it pool of water interacted with this cult's peculiar form of worship (moonshine and the pool is filled with severed eyes). Some very good mess-with-the-thing content in here, like the secret door being revealed by turning bat idols 180 and grave markers that do absolutely nothing unless messed with pointlessly (then it's skele-time). Treasure is flavorful, I'm always a fan of silver dentures as loot. Interaction is light but present in the form of the mermaid.
   ...which, hey, let's go with that as the first of what can be improved...THE MERMAID DROWNS PEOPLE IN HER POOL, THERE SHOULD BE LOOT DOWN THERE. Feels like kind of a big miss. Actually, upon reflection, it's more than a little weird how all the loot in the caves is found in handy-dandy chests. That's more videogame than it should be. The random encounters are, uh...definitely random. Bit too high on the "signs and portents" like shadows moving weird and lights going out, need more gnarly fights in this otherwise pretty sparse fighty place. The linear map isn't a problem, really, but more complexity would definitely not go amiss. We can always do better. Like writing it for a real system instead of for Knave.
   Let's be real though, the best use case here is using it as it is, a cute little lair suitable for 29-82minutes of exploration. One doesn't have a lot to extract without extracting the whole dang lair, but that's fine, this is a scale needed too.
   Final Rating? ***/***** with an added half star if the vibe suits your style and you use a real TTRPG system. Don't hate this at all, I might even use it for a lair in certain random exploration results. Good job, this one is usable, which is the highest praise I can give to any adventure.