Why Does the Well Dweller Guide Look Like a Website from Twenty Years Ago?

Modern guide websites tend to follow a well-established design language.

Large images, cards, clear categories, responsive layouts and increasingly streamlined navigation.

There is nothing wrong with these choices.

But while preparing the Well Dweller guide, another, now uncommon kind of website began to feel appealing again:

The Chinese game-specific guide sites of twenty years ago.

By today’s design standards, those sites were not especially polished.

Pages were often narrow.

A long directory ran down the left side.

Chapter headings might simply be conspicuous red text.

Relatively small screenshots appeared among the walkthrough paragraphs.

Bosses, items, magic and maps were often organized directly into colorful tables.

At the bottom of the page, navigation might be nothing more than:

“Previous | Contents | Next”

There were no elaborate animations.

No hero section occupying an entire screen.

And no giant card appearing every few paragraphs.

Yet this structure had one very direct advantage:

After opening the page, it was easy to see what was available.

The left-hand directory ran from systems to walkthroughs, maps, bosses, secrets and collectibles.

It could even look a little dense.

But that density gave players a clear first impression:

“The information for this game is all organized here.”

Many websites now hide more information in pursuit of visual simplicity.

Three entry points become three large cards.

Additional sections move into secondary menus.

A screen shows only a small amount of content.

For a general-purpose website, that may feel more modern.

But a guide site does not necessarily need to work that way.

When a game contains many maps, bosses, items and secrets, the amount of information does not need to be concealed.

The real challenge is making that information easy to find even when there is a lot of it.

The Well Dweller guide will therefore revisit some traditional guide-site design methods.

A complete directory kept visible on the left, for example.

Clear, direct text links.

And familiar markers:

★ Main route · ◆ Important collectibles · ※ Cautions · → Next step

The body will not be turned entirely into modern cards.

Walkthroughs remain article-led, with screenshots appearing naturally among the text.

Information that a table explains well—boss details, item locations or requirements—will be presented in tables.

Page navigation returns to the simplest form:

“Previous / Contents / Next”

These elements retain part of the traditional guide-site reading experience.

Of course, this does not mean literally rebuilding a website from twenty years ago.

Text will not be too small to read.

Page width will not be fixed for old monitors.

On phones, the long directory moves into a separate guide menu.

Images adapt to the screen.

Wide tables scroll within their own container instead of breaking the page.

SEO, responsiveness, HTML structure and loading performance still follow modern website practices.

A more accurate description of the design is therefore:

“Traditional guide-site reading, built on a modern website.”

The theme is called:

GAME NOTE CLASSIC

It is not only about nostalgia.

More importantly, this kind of structure is well suited to long game guides.

When a game has many areas, bosses, collectibles and systems, a guide site can sometimes say plainly:

“There is a lot of content here.”

While also giving players confidence:

“What you need should be somewhere in this directory.”

That sense of certainty is part of the guide experience.

Well Dweller will be the first guide to use GAME NOTE CLASSIC.

It is also among the first new additions as GAME NOTE moves from separate guide subdomains into a unified game directory.

A new technical structure paired with a very old reading style.

Perhaps that is a good fit for a game guide.