I recently had some more opportunity to lead new adventurers down into the temple. Some made it out alive, most not.
A local group organized a RPG day event and I participated as a GM. This let me run this adventure for some more players. I had a mixture of unexperienced and experienced players. The experienced players however, mostly played D&D and were new in OSR games.
Let's talk about some things I took from this event.
Empty Rooms
I was at first sceptical in having four empty rooms at the very beginning of the dungeon. I blamed the dice at the time. Having played it now a bit more, it isn't as bad as I initially thought. To be fully fair though, they are not completely "empty". There is some set-dressing and hints in them.
But players were mainly occupied with thinking about the horde of Orcs that was following them. So the first few rooms they mostly scrambled for ideas on how to deal with that, so that the empty rooms didn't even matter. In addition it helped them ease into the game - especially for the new players, that hat little experience with RPGs.
I guess it also helped so that they didn't feel that they somehow missed something important in the first few rooms. Which in the end contributed to their enjoyment more, than the fact that there's not really much in the first few rooms.
One caveat may be, that groups tended to split up. I don't know if it has to do, because there's nothing around and they wanted to explore faster, or just because they were a larger group (both groups I played with that day, had six players).
Time Pressure
Only one of the parties had a run it with the Orcs. But I have to say, that the other did cleverly outmanoeuvre them (what I expected to do). They made such a mess, that it was hard for the Orcs to proceed in the dungeon. Which is also good - players are using their imagination and don't default to combat. Seeing that from players that are also coming from D&D is a good sign in my books.
But in all games I had the feeling that players were aware that something is behind them. I used the Tension Pool and it did enforce that feeling a bit more. Every time I let a die drop into the container, they had the realization that they needed to hurry or something bad is happening to them. That lead to some funny situations and decisions.
Do you really need to use it? Probably not. I think there's enough incentive for the players to move on. If not, the scouting party will probably catch up and remind them.
All in all, I think there's a chance of one encounter with the Orcs. I never was "able" to have a second search party catch up with them. I don't know if this is good or bad. If you have the feeling that there should be more pressure, let more Orc parties into the dungeon.
Party Size and Tweaks
I found, that four players is about a good size. More is possible and up to you as a GM if you can handle it. You probably need to tweak the amount of monsters there are and fiddle with HP of some of the solo monsters. With six players, there are quite some actions they can do, and monster HP will drain fast.
I tweaked some of the numbers and gave the monsters either multiple attacks or attacks that can outright kill characters to compensate for that a bit. Players should be able to kill monsters, don't get me wrong, but it should feel that it has a very steep cost and it is better to avoid fighting.
Big parties also tend to split up more.
Showcase
I talked to some players afterwards and discussed with them, that I intended to have this dungeon as a showcase for Shadowdark (and maybe OSR in general) and some of its classes. They could see that some of the situations are that, but I don't know if they would have gotten there on their own.
But they had a good time nonetheless. And some of the players had already formed some backstories for the characters that survived and incorporated some things they encountered in the temple. So it is a success.
The files on itch.io are updated with the newest insights and tweaks. I encourage you to GM it yourself. I'm now at the point, were I'm too close to the subject and might not see certain aspects. There will still be some spelling and grammatical errors. And it needs an editing pass to make everything consistent, but the core should be now done.
Leave me some feedback if you do play or GM it. Either as a comment on itch.io or over @bluesky.