The Dink Network

Grasp of Darkness

Cropped version of screenshot originally taken by Drunkpunk. Farmer Bob, eh?
June 27th, 2010
v1.00
Score : 7.2 good
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
So, a review for the first time in quite a while. Decided to review this one, while I still remember something about it.

Grasp of Darkness by Quiztis is an extremely good, and fun game. Considering that this is Quiztis's first actually released D-Mod, I give him a round of applause, but this does not mean that I am going to be any less harsher, than on other D-Mods.

To sum it all up, Grasp of Darkness is a fun game, but not a perfect one, and the reasons are following:

Story:
The storyline was fun, and it changed a lot. Now, plot twists are usually very cool and keeps you interested, this D-Mod was not an exception, but I do feel that some of the things were overall left a little bit unfinished/unexplained.
8.0.

Gameplay:
The gameplay was very simple, yet nice. It started out interesting and good, but turned a slight bit repeative towards the end. The fighting was very well balanced, but in a different way that in most D-Mods. The way D-Mods usually are balanced is by making the enemy strong/weak enough for the player, in Grasp of Darkness however, you felt "I am never going to get past this impossible enemy", but find it pretty easy after all. I really liked this, although I have no idea was it supposed to feel like that.
Some of the cutscenes were quite dull and had some bugs. For example, you could sometimes move during the cutscenes, and sometimes not (and by this I mean the same cutscene). The bugs did not effect the gameplay too much but it left a feeling of sloppiness.
7.5.

Map:
The map was a very typical one. Some of the screens were very nicely detailed while some were a little bit... less detailed. Overall, a very typical map, with not much to say about.
7.0.

Graphics:
Whether the new ones made by Quiztis himself or taken from others, they were very nice and used well!! One of my favorite aspects in the whole D-Mod!!
8.5.

Music:
Without music, the game is incomplete. This is something you have to remember. I felt like that in this D-Mod, the music was fitting, but not as fitting as it could have been. The quality of the MIDI was pretty much the same thing.
6.0.

Overall:
The D-Mod was a good one, but it could have been lots of better too. It also left a kind of unfinished feeling, because it has the atmosphere of an Epic, yet it is not.
My overall score for this good D-Mod from Quiztis is...
7.2.

Fit for:
If you're just simply bored, this will guarantee a few hours of fun.

Final words:
What's up with that pyromanic!? o_O
April 19th, 2010
v1.00
Score : 8.7 good
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iplaydink
Peasant He/Him Sweden
Hmm.. 
Grasp of Darkness is Quiztis first dmod, his first contribution to the Dink Network. I really enjoyed playing this most of the time; and for a first dmod it very impressive!
The D-mod isn't really long, but it still takes time to finish, I got a playtime of over 3½h! This is probably because I got lost all the time and spent a lot of time trying to kill quite hard bosses, but more of that later.

Story:
This is the strongest part of the dmod, not necessarily plot itself but rather the way is was put out with lot's of detailed cutscenes. The beginning was nearly perfect, entertaining and professional-looking.

Everything starts when Dink is sent out by King Daniel to investigate some strange events, someone attacked the castle there with a meteoroid and a house turned all grey and shadowy

This part deserves a 9.9, I want to see more of those clever and well-made cutscenes in dmods!

Scripting:
Nothing outstanding here just ordinary scripting with a fair amount of bugs. The most annoying one was that if you had the throwing-axe equipped before talking to the last boss, after he transformed into a green knight you will punch when you use the axe?! By pressing enter and choosing axe again it will work though. Nothing Critical; but annoying indeed.

The scripting in the cutscenes was well-made with lot's of walking and such, but I counted that under the topic Story.

An 8.0 for this part; Nothing wrong with the scripting just some small bugs.

Graphics:

Here we have some nice things made by Quiztis and some graphics by other great artists (Like SimonK with others). Graphics can always be better, and Quiztis would have to create more himself to earn all points; But it's worth a 9.0.

Mapping:
Mostly enough details, sometimes a bit empty. There was a couple of dephque errors; but there aren't a dmod that don't have them. More bothering was the facts that cracks in the ground, grass, flowers and mushrooms often had nohit disabled. This could have been forgettable, but when almost all the weapons in the game are ranged it's a big flaw. It's also ugly with sprite trees as borders, something I learnt from own experience. 7.5

Gameplay:
In the beginning the gameplay was great, but towards the middle (When you entered the forest) It was really annoying with screenlocks on every screen and an environment you easily got lost in. Frustrating. The bosses was also a bit hard, some people like the challenge of an almost impossible boss but I don't. But overall I liked the gameplay and I'm ready to give it 8.0 points for this part.

Sound and Music:
I liked this music and sounds all the time. 9.9.

Overall:
A great dmod that I recommend to everyone! Quiztis has done a good job with this and I assume the possible sequel will be even better. Let's calculate the average score.
9.9 (Story) + 8.0 (Scripting) + 9.0 (Graphics) + 7.5 (Mapping) + 8.0 (Gameplay) 9.9 (Sound) = 52.3
52.3/6 ~ 8.7

Thanks for a some hours of fun Quiztis! I hope you keep dmoding!





July 5th, 2013
v. 1.052
Score : 8.5 good
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Leprochaun
Peasant He/Him Japan bloop
Responsible for making things not look like ass 
Story: The story in Grasp of Darkness is a pretty normal one. You get called by a king to go help someone in need- then after a bit of minor questing there's an evil wizard trying to destroy the world or something of that sort. In this D-Mod the evil wizard wants to bring darkness to the world as seen with the grey tinted sprites. Many of the cutscenes were impressively done.

Mapping: Certain areas were very well detailed. The meteor crash in the castle for example. The overall design of sections were interesting. The forest with all the teleports did feel somewhat lazy, though it was still fun to go through.

Graphics: This D-Mod uses many grey tinted graphics. They're quite nice and always fit in where they're placed. It also uses the green knight graphics, the ice spell, and the electrified stone wall graphics.

Combat: As it says, combat is quite difficult. The enemies weren't too overpowered. Though to be fair I was pretty much just running around shooting arrows into them. The slimes were pretty awful. They were terribly fast and only gave 1 xp. It was the boss fights that really bugged me. There were just too many one-hit-death cases.

Overall I was very impressed with this and I'd definitely recommend it. Don't expect to have any fun when facing a boss though.
February 13th, 2011
Version 1.03 FINAL
Score : 6.8 fair
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DinkKiller
Peasant He/Him United States
The world could always use more heroes 
I don't have a whole lot to say about this D-Mod.

Storyline: Straight forward, pretty basic, but really good.

Graphics: Any D-Mod that uses new graphics well definitely gets a +

Map: Nicely detailed, consistant, and not much that resembles a barren wasteland, except perhaps the "desert" area. A good amount of power-ups and other secret items

Gameplay: Until I hit the first boss, the gameplay was as flawless as a first D-Mod goes. The bosses are INSANELY difficult, and nearly impossible bosses are not my cup of tea.

Overall: I think the difficulty curve of this D-Mod is way out of whack, but otherwise it is a good D-Mod that's great for players who enjoy going up against the odds. I certainly am not one of those players.