Alright so this is based on running a whole lot of published adventures that were not written for Shadowdark, but observing certain elements gelling particularly well. These are things beyond what would be considered good design in general for oldschool adventure games, or things that seem to behave differently in Shadowdark. As my points of comparison: I have run and played decades of AD&D/2e, run a fair share of Forbidden Lands and DCC, run some Cairn and Mรถrk Borg, and played plenty of MCC and Swords & Wizardry.
One thing that seemed to really put the sparkle in everyone's eye and keep people engaged, returning to the open table, and invested in their character was a small number of specific types of ๐โ๐๐๐๐โโญ growth. People really, really, really like it when their character is unique and special and different and that doesn't change in a game without tonnes of character options, so adventures have to have avenues for diegetic growth, but not just the usual ones. Anything that in some small way lets a player either expand their class toolkit slightly, or gives them something normally outside their party role, but is limited enough to not muscle in on other classes is aces. Shadowdark has pretty tight balance between classes in a way that maintains class identity, and also has attribute increases baked into the advancement, so a lot of the usual suspects for diegetic character rewards aren't as appropriate. The examples that persisted the best were the non-transferable ones. So, new scrolls for spells that weren't in the core book (such as Summon the Kraken or Instagator). Entities that granted spell-like boons (the fighter got Featherfall). Class-locked magic gear, like holy symbols that can be used to turn something other than undead. Etc. Of particular popularity amongst players was books as treasure. Consistently a hit with Shadowdark players because of the Study downtime; with an explicit procedure that translates access to knowledge into character growth, tomes that allow a PC to Study a particular topic become as exciting as magic items for many players, who would lug around the tome until they could pass the Study check. A magic longsword that can be used by half the party doesn't become a part of the character identity, because everyone knows it'll just pass on to another character if they die. This seems to be true regardless of whether that character actually dies. Perhaps homebrewing in item saving throws would change this, but the long campaign I ran was RAW.
Shadowdark dungeons beyond a certain size also need resources for the characters. There should be torch equivalents or the components to make torches in the dungeon. There should be one-use items that offer some utility, and there should probably be some sort of area that the PCs could rest in. That last one is something I would have disagreed with before running the game. Shadowdark characters essentially resetting when they sleep creates a very easy to manage cycle of exploring for a session, pushing, resting up and being ready with a lot of your resources next session. It's super amenable to each session having different players, which is good because the greatest enemy of RPGs is scheduling. Running an open table with a rotating cast, but without multiple parties, is eased by this mechanic. What also worked for this was discoverable egress points that were camouflaged from the ground but reasonably obvious from inside the dungeon. Cloister of the Frog God has a particularly good example of this where you can find a shaft up to an island covered in ruined walls, and none of the wandering monsters can or will climb it. It becomes a sort of "save your progress" point where you can get immediately back to the action from that shaft next time. In my experience, such an egress point does not serve the same purpose in TSR editions. The same scenario in Swords & Wizardry (native to the module) would be different because S&W parties do not fully recuperate from a single night's rest like Shadowdark characters do, it doesn't give that same feeling of the next session being a new 'run' from a newly saved starting point. Also because the encumbrance is so different, I have observed that Shadowdark parties are much less likely to have a sort of shared party stash of resources and if they do it is more limited. Mostly because you have no-one to carry all that. So it is a good design element in general but it has specific interactions with Shadowdark worth mentioning, and I think is essentially obligatory for very large Shadowdark dungeons. A Shadowdark party uses the egress point to go deeper nine times out of ten, which is what you want. A Swords & Wizardry party, or at least the one I'm in, would use the egress point to shift basic gear around, memorize different spells, heal some but not everything and then backtrack to solve problems they felt they weren't equipped for the first time they encountered them.
Another thing that is particular to Shadowdark is how many obstacles you can cram into a dungeon that a wizard can solve. Because they don't have to hem and haw between memorizing a utility or combat spell like oldschool D&D, wizards can actually provide very consistent utility. Burning hands was used far more in my campaign to clear poisonous plants, seal doors made of ice, melt icy floor hazards, etc. than it was ever used for combat. You can put a bunch of shit into a dungeon that could be interacted with through wizard spells and if the wizard doesn't have the right spells or the party has no wizard then that's still fine. They'll come up with solutions, or they just won't see some parts of the dungeon. Not everything should be found anyways. But in my opinion, Shadowdark dungeon designers should be thinking about the wizard with almost the same frequency you'd normally be thinking about the thief when designing obstacles.
Related side point: from a sample size of 30+ players, everyone remembered and talked about the dungeons they didn't 'full-clear' more than the ones where they went everywhere. I don't think there's anything Shadowdark-specific about that but it's something I think Shadowdark a lot of Shadowdark creators should be mindful of. You don't just want stuff so hidden only the GM knows, you also want some stuff that maybe the players know about a little but just didn't figure how to sort out, or they dipped early. Isle of the Plangent Mage wasn't the best adventure to run in Shadowdark but did have very good examples of that specific point.
Moving on. Shadowdark is very mechanically streamlined, with unified resolution. Thus it is way more of a shock, and way more engaging, when a dungeon has a little bit of the old mechanical alienation and I don't mean it the way Karl Marx does. Something in your dungeon should work different and catch them off guard; the players should be trying to work out how that even fits into the game. I think Daniel J. Bishop's adventures are a fun example of this, he's constantly throwing some new mechanic or procedure in there. This is something that just does not have the same effect in, say, AD&D or DCC because everything always works different anyways, and the players are a lot less likely to be familiar with absolutely all the rules.
What else. Well, when it comes to combat Shadowdark parties have uniquely low action economy. Most other oldschool games have characters with multiple combat actions per turn, or hirelings, or both. In addition, most other oldschool games have defences that scale to much greater proportions. I found when running various dungeons that the amount of actions an enemy or group of enemies could take was far and away the most important indicator of danger, as opposed to my old AD&D games where the attack bonus, saves and AC are a proportionally much greater contributor to threat.
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