The Dink Network

108: Dinky Dimensions 1: FIAT Author: Dan Walma Release Date: December 11, 2001

REPUTATION NOTE: This DMOD is one of the select group to have a rating of 9.0 or better (9.2) on The Dink Network.

I think that this one might not mean the same thing to a lot of you as it does to me.

I mean, you might really like "FIAT," or maybe you don't like it so much, but I remember it mostly as something that was "coming soon" for what felt like forever.

"FIAT" is a prequel to the 1999 mod "End of Time" (the continuity of the "Dinky Dimensions" series, also known as the "Cast Awakening" series, among other names, is a can of worms I'll open in another writeup), and had been in development for over two years. I was an enthusiastic follower of Dan's DMODs and had played all of them, so I anticipated his planned epic more than anything else. Although I'd been out of the community for nearly a year at this point, I would still lurk occasionally, and "FIAT" was the reason why. When it came out, I had to reinstall Dink Smallwood in order to play it. I played it, had a great time, uninstalled Dink, and didn't touch it again until 2006.

Y'all are probably sick of my soul-searching by now, but I can't think about this one without looking back at what it meant to me, and what it meant was being able to put Dink behind me for good. I had some dark thoughts in my head wrapped up in this game - thoughts about what kind of person I really am. I wanted to stop checking the Dink Network, but the excuse I would make for doing it anyway was, "Well, I haven't played FIAT yet."

Now I've played it twice. I told myself when I started this project that I'd take it at least this far, and see how I felt. Right now I feel pretty good about taking it the rest of the way.

I think Dan must have felt the same way the rest of us did about the ever-impending release of this DMOD, if not more so, because the initial release version was 0.99. Even the current version is 0.99j. A version 1.0 was planned, but never happened. If anybody thought that it was weird that I released Malachi the Jerk 1.1 just two days after 1.0, you should know that "FIAT" went through seven updates before 2002. Anyway, it's still easy to see why the number that usually marks an initial release has continued to elude this DMOD. It's by no means terribly buggy, but it crashes. Yes, it crashes and it's not always obvious why. It seems like one of those annoying things that varies from person to person and is difficult to reproduce in order to fix. Save often, folks. I did, so I never lost much progress.

This is one of my personal favorite DMODs. There's so much cool stuff going on with the gameplay, primarily the elemental mechanic that the story revolves around. All the standard monsters - the pillbug, the slime, the bonca, the spiky thing, the slayer, and the stone giant - have five different element-based varieties with different stats and the appropriate elemental weakness (the dragon also has a few different versions). It amounts to the most variety in enemies I think you'll ever encounter in a DMOD, and it's a lot of fun seeing all these different enemies and switching your weapon and strategy to suit them. Oh yeah, and there are these weird spine-worm things.

You can also imbue your weapons with the power of the five elements. Furthermore, there are the special weapons of Snedfee and Gimac, a couple of heroes whose parents must have been big fans of anagrams; these are random drops that will increase your defense or magic by ten points when equipped and are enormously useful. All this results in quite the full inventory, somewhat compensated for by the fact that up to five potions, bombs etc. will stack in the same slot. There are keyboard shortcuts to use these items, but I didn't use them because they're not so convenient for somebody who uses a gamepad like me. I wish I could have assigned "buttstomp" to a button, but that's not something the engine really allows for unless you put it in the map's place.

I really liked the way the world was laid out (and incidentally, apparently the founders of the Magik isles were also huge anagram fans). At no point did I ever feel lost. Big expanses of land with points of interest dotted throughout are not found here; instead, the map is quite purposeful and no two areas feel quite the same. You always know where you're going.

The plot, of course, leans so hard upon the "elemental macguffins" trope that I considered installing guardrails, but it does so with wit and style, making for an enjoyable time throughout. There were frustrations, naturally (HA HA I BET YOU WISH YOU BROUGHT A BOMB, HAVE FUN GOING ALL THE WAY BACK ***HOLE), such as the infamous spell-stealing pig, which got a little old, but nothing got on me so much that I stopped having fun, which is a common problem. I did get stuck a few times and referenced the most popular guide on DinkSolutions. In every case, I had been on the right track and missed something stupid like a stick hidden behind a wall.

Things do get rather dark at points, memorably including a rather teeth-grindingly explicit description of people getting tortured to death, but I thought it worked pretty well. It's nice to keep the whole "you have to save the world" thing in perspective.

I want to say that this DMOD featured the first boss fight that you're required to lose (as in, hit 0 HP) in order to continue, but when I think about it I'm not completely sure that this hasn't happened before.

There's one unfortunate bug I ran into that I felt was worth mentioning. There's a minigame you have to play where sounds will play and you have to quickly press the correct direction that corresponds to that sound. Well, when I got there, even after multiple tries it refused to freeze Dink for this event. I could still do it, assuming that I never pressed the talk button.

There are loads of secrets and things to find in this one. I only found some of them on my own. I did go out of my way to get an ultimate weapon, which is quite a bit of effort but very useful, and nets you a bit of extra ending in which a wizard talks to a fountain. So that's nice.

What more can I say? Dink came. He saw. He conquered. It was so bad ass. FIAT himself did take me two tries due to a certain hard to dodge attack. Anyway, you guys should all play FIAT, it's a good DMOD. I mean, you probably have already. But still.

SECRET MINIGAMES

Oh right, there's also some extra games here. Let's start with the only one I actually found on my own.

Ed the SCV 2: Dan Walma is a huge jerk and he's going straight to Hell. Anybody who's ever played Ed the SCV 2 knows what I'm talking about.

Okay, I'm kidding. Sort of. The original "Ed the SCV" was a romp that showcased some nifty, unusual weapons. This one is a bomb-centric puzzler that kicks you in the pants and then flips you off.

Ed, who you may recall died at the end of his original DMOD, is resurrected with the task of killing evil sinner Dink Smallwood. Nice, right? I thought this was a great concept and was really looking forward to it. Well, after spending twenty minutes trying to figure out what to do (Silly Ed, that is clearly not a pumpkin!), I looked it up and found out I was supposed to talk to a pillbug, which is complete bull**** because there are tons of pillbugs and the rest of them don't talk. Given that information, I was able to construct a unspeakable device.

There's no payoff. Not only do you not get to kill Dink, but Ed dies again in a stupid way. Again. Then the DMOD tells you to press Alt+F4 to quit, and after a minute and a half, it starts insulting you. But there's got to be a cool secret waiting and OH MY GOD. I'm in Hell. Hell is where I am. YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS, CAPTAIN REDINK1.

I must admit that I went ahead and cheated to see the rest of the secret minigames. I mean, I want to be thorough here, and I've still got a lot more DMODs to play. I don't agree with the review on that file, incidentally, that calls FIAT "so bug filled it's impossible to gain those secrets without cheating anyway." It's really not that bad.

Exterminator: Click to drop bombs and prevent the pillbugs from crossing the screen. The difficulty ramps up quick, and I couldn't hack it. By the way, pillbugs aren't insects - they're crustaceans. But, y'know, we do call 'em "bugs" anyway.

Dinkaxian: A little side-view shoot-em-up. Cool idea, but it is a little frustrating how slow the ship moves. At any rate, several waves in it became impossible to continue because some ships were indestructible.

Dinkemon: An attempt at a Dink game of Pokémon. This one begins with a great intro that presents Dink's trip to the Darklands exactly as it was in the original game - until he gets to the Seth area and Milder has already won, resulting in Dink's humiliation. It was absolutely priceless, I gotta tell you.

Check it out - if you play this after Dinkaxian, the status bar gets all confused. You move at the slow ship speed, too.

In this game you wander through the main DMOD's map, challenging the NPCs to Dinkemon battles. You directly control your pillbug instead of using turn-based commands, but it's still quite different and interesting. It's hard to get much of anywhere, though, and there's not much to really accomplish in this unfinished minigame.

FIAT Gladiator: Apparently based on the trailer for the movie Gladiator. There's actually a little story here about a man named George's quest for freedom. You start with pretty much nothing, and have to earn money through fights to buy yourself equipment and stat increases so you can make MORE money from fights and move up the tiers until you can buy your freedom. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

I was! I spent like an hour and a half on this minigame (!) and really dug it. I've always wanted a Dink experience like this. I mean, there was Dink Arena, but something with a goal to work towards. This was almost exactly what I was thinking of, although I could think of a few improvements. For example, at certain levels, you could have little plot events happen in the setup area. This is just a minigame, though, and a dang good one. The ending is short but satisfying.

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The minigames might not seem like much individually (except Gladiator, that was great), but together, they're a showcase for all the different kinds of ideas for games you can make in the Dink engine. Mike Snyder threw down the gauntlet with "Dinkanoid" way back in August 1998, and from then until here, Dan was the only one to pick up the torch (uh, I guess the gauntlet caught fire while it was on the ground) with games like Alliance Command, Frogger, and Dinkers. DMODs mostly tread roughly the same ground, but if you're willing to wrestle around with DinkC and the graphics, you can still do so many things that are new and untested.

I spent a lot of time playing "FIAT" and writing this. My end time on the main game was 9:21, not quite topping my 9:42 mark from Stone of Balance, but I easily logged over 2 more hours on the minigames. I also hit level 18 in the Gladiator minigame, setting a new record for the highest level I've ever hit during a DMOD that starts you from level 1.

I also took way too many screenshots. You guys want to get nuts with screenshots? LET'S GET NUTS.

Today I learned many things.

I learned that Dink is really good at counting.

I learned that even Dink has his limits.

I learned that books suck when you try to read them by staring at the back of a bookshelf.

I learned that Dink takes magazine fandom very seriously.

I learned that falling through a roof kinda hurts.

I learned that regurgitation has more uses than I previously thought.

I learned that ducks play the long game.

I learned that trees are unimpressed by cutscenes.

I learned that I am extremely unoriginal.

I learned that Dink has 3 ducks loaded in his whistle.

I learned that logs floating on seas of Pepto-Bismol are a good place to do headstands.

I learned that pigs are holy warriors. (And persistent spell thieves)

I learned that Tal is a prophet.

I learned that somebody set up us the bomb.

I learned that fields of work are distinguishable mainly by smell.

I learned that this community is still great after more than 15 years. Thanks for reading 108 writeups, everybody.

Next: People have asked for this sort of thing, so 2001 year wrapup!