The Dink Network

Dinky Dimensions 1: FIAT

Here we have an extremely detailed screenshot of Dink trying to shake hands with Mr. Fire Pillbug. The temple of air. From the COTPATD project. Gladiator minigame. From the COTPATD project.
August 21st, 2002
v0.99j
Score : 8.5 good
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Peasant He/Him
 
D(inky )D(imensions )1: F(rom )I(nside )A( )T(ree) is a really cool D-Mod, though it has bad balance and some major bugs.

Plot/Game Play 8.7: The idea with defeating different elements is "old", but redink1 came good out of it with FIAT. This D-Mod is huge, with a lot of new weapons and enemies. It took me 20 hours to finish it, and I haven't found all of the secrets yet. Some of them are fine, and extend the playing time a bit, but they can only be accessed after completing the game. I don't like that idea very much, because the mini games would be better as separate D-Mods. The intro is too long and the beginning is almost impossible without the walkthrough. An unnecessarily high amount of time is spent walking back and forth when solving quests. This could easily have been avoided by adding a bridge between Tware and Medlid later in the game. Also, the islands could have been much smaller.

Graphics 8.0: The graphics are good, but not excellent. There are thousands of new ones, but not all of them have a high quality. While the fire and air monsters' graphics are "not very good", I do really like the skeletons, for example. There is also a sitting merchant in one of the mini games. Anyway, graphics is not the most important part of a D-Mod. A D-Mod can be good, even if it only has the graphics from the original game. An example is... the original game!

Music/Sounds 9.8: Some Midis, especially the one on Medlid, are a bit boring, but else they are nearly perfect! Anyway, the choice of tunes in some Midis could have been better. There are 29 sounds, not all with a very high quality, but there are still many cool ones. I don't care much about sounds, though.

Innovativity 9.5: FIAT is a very innovative D-Mod. Some of the things redink1 made, including the elemental monsters, weapons and magic, are incredible! If you are a D-Mod author, I recommend downloading the source (which should have been included, really) at http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~dink/g8_abc/display.cgi?action=File&ID=240.

Bugs/Stability 4.2: This is definitely FIAT's worst side. Something (the elements, I suppose) causes the game, or entire computer, to crash frequently. Of course I find that annoying, but it doesn't destroy all the fun in playing this D-Mod. Sometimes the first bow is very strong against other monsters than the dragons on Tware, with damages up to 400 000... There are some annoying, freeze-like bugs too.

Balance 5.0: When using elemental magic, the monsters target the ball instead of Dink, which makes them unable to defend themselves! Also, if I attack a monster with a weapon a few times before beginning with magic, I get experience when it dies. Together, these things make it much too easy to kill the monsters, so I guess the last one is a bug. The knights are fine, but some of them, especially the water and void ones, are much too easy. All the knights should have been as difficult as (Or even harder than) the air and earth knights. The final boss, FIAT, is really cool, and he has just the right strength. Hmmmm... The air knight is much easier the second time than the first one, probably because the player doesn't have fireball magic the first time (s)he faces him. Something should be done with that too, I think.

Overall (8.5): FIAT is a very cool D-Mod after all. If the bugs and bad stability/balance is fixed, and if the author includes the source, in the later versions (redink1 says FIAT v1.00 will come soon.), I will give it a much higher score than I do now.