The Dink Network

Fall of Darkness

From the COTPATD project.
August 13th, 2009
Battlefield Demo v0.95
Score : 4.0 tolerable
custom_marpro.png
Marpro
Peasant He/Him bloop
 
I was looking around at the different reviews for a tip of a good D-Mod to play. I noticed that “Fall of Darkness” had received stunningly good points from a certain reviewer. My curiosity grew and I felt that I had to try this one. I’ve only played Skulls early D-Mods, “the honor of the cast” series and the “Kill & Bill” series. All I can say; they were just… awful.

I must admit that Skulls ability to create D-Mods have greatly improved since the first I mentioned above. However, this D-Mod didn’t give me the slightest feeling of enjoyment, that’s a bad thing… The story is very unclear, you’re a member of the “Knews” people and your first quest is to get in a cave and discover some kind if artifact. Well, a decent, slightly confusing beginning… fair enough. The first encounters you meet in the cave are some flying skulls. This was very unpleasant because there was a small cutscene, in which the skulls could harm your character when you were still frozen. Very annoying. After the cutscene you have to destroy those skulls. This is nearly impossible to do; the skulls have an ENORMOUS amount of defense, hit points and attack. They also move very “buggy”. The only way I was able to kill them in, was to exploit the Dink engine and move up at the wall, despite the fact that you shouldn’t do that. I cheated and added 85 mega potions at the first screen. I still had to hit them around 3-4 times before they died.

Further on, the map is poorly decorated and the story isn’t very good, I don’t know if I understood it right but you were suppose to retrieve an artifact which an image of yourself also is trying to get? Mostly confusing.

The music was mostly good, but the new sound effects (like when your character got hurt) were horrible. Skull used a LOT of graphics pack, mostly created by SimonK. I feel that adding a large amount of new graphics are more annoying than pleasant if the rest of the D-Mod can’t keep up with that kind of quality.

Even though I didn’t enjoy this D-Mod, I have faith in Skulls growing ability in creating D-Mods, and I know the next D-Mod he release will be jaw-dropping compared to his previous.

Score: 4.0
September 21st, 2008
Battlefield Demo v0.95
Score : 6.5 fair
girl.gif
joshriot
Peasant They/Them United States
keep it real 
in fall of darkness you play as the spike character created by simon. you only have two weapons throughout the game, fist and fireball. i suspect most people wont even bother getting past the first screen of the game. if you have the patience and read the discussion on the dmod you can hide on the side of the screen and hit the skulls 150 times each (yes 150 times) to kill them only to get to the next screen to have to do it again.

now the first major problem is that you can stay outside of the hardness and keep walking around up on the cliff. i talked to the prisoner in the gate from outside the cliff and then got warped inside of the cliff to some table where i had to fight a goblin that was pretty easy. then i advanced to the next screen where i killed another easy goblin then killed the queen.

then next you "fall through the floor" i guess and go kill a dragon that takes around 300 hits to kill and the game is over.

i also noticed a major bug with the healthbar towards the end of the game.

summary: not really worth a download. shows slight potential if the authors seriously rework the combat aspect. bugs need to be fixed. however the only redeeming quality is the game shows some pretty good scripting (when the bugs dont distort it) and creative use of graphics. lets hope the next version will be better, or at least playable.
November 8th, 2007
Battlefield Demo v0.95
Score : 9.0 exceptional
pillbug.gif
dinkinfreak
Peasant He/Him Greece
Real lurkers don't appear on the lurkers list. 
Whem I saw that Skull worked on that D-Mod, I thought that it would be something plotless, very badly cared for like Bill&Kill. I thought wrong.

Graphics: 9.0
New ones are quite a few in the demo, and they fit very well in the game.

Sound: 9.6
New midis are used perfectly, along with new sound effects.

Gameplay: 8.6
It is the weakest part of the D-Mod. Although there is a great plot and there are no hardness/scripting errors, some enemies at the start of the game are almost impossible to beat, quickly frustrating the player, and there are some spelling mistakes.
Also, there are no side quests, making it unlikely for one to play it again once they're finished.

Overall: 9.0
All in all, this is a very good D-Mod that is worth a try.