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213: Quest for the Gems Author: Pieter Biewenga (Metatarasal) Release Date: May 3, 2005
"Can you help me?"
"Quest for the Gems" is the first DMOD by everybody's favorite misspelled footbone. It's a pretty straightforward DMOD, but longer than I expected (it took me 37 minutes).
The title makes one expect yet another hunt for the Chaos Emeralds of the Week, but that's not quite what's going on here. The gems in this DMOD are not talismans of magical power, but mere valuable precious gems. The gems have been stolen from people and mines, and Dink is sent to help mainly because the authorities are concerned that, with everyone having their wealth stolen, they won't be able to pay their taxes.
They take taxes very seriously around here.
Dink is not convinced. He asks the King twice in the intro whether some kind of evil wizard is involved. His instincts don't fail him - of COURSE there's an evil wizard. Throughout the DMOD, there are short cutscenes of the wizard's minions bringing him more stolen gems. This always causes him to exclaim something about how he now nearly has enough to complete his evil master plan. What does this evil plan entail? How do a bunch of pretty, expensive rocks help him complete it? The game makes absolutely no effort to answer these questions.
As has been demonstrated several times, Dink knows how this works by now.
It's a pretty likeable adventure. The maps look nice and polished. I only ran into one bug. Maybe it's a bit too easy, but I will usually take that over too hard. The dialogues are all rather simple and short, but they don't all have to be talkfests. The only thing I really feel like complaining about is the game's extreme over-reliance on arbitrary triggers.
An arbitrary trigger is a device used a bit too commonly in video games in which one event "triggers" another to happen somewhere else even though there's no apparent causal connection between them. A good example from the original Dink Smallwood is the bridge to Windermere, which is broken until you do something totally unrelated. That's actually not a particularly bad example because it diverts the player from something they'll probably come back to in a fairly natural way, but it still lacks a pleasing logic. "Quest for the Gems" uses this kind of plot device so much that it gets quite confusing at times.
Where DOES he put them all?
(Actual game quote: "You can use my pumkins")
In fact, "QftG" is mostly a long string of scenarios that follow the same pattern. Dink runs into some sort of obstacle, you examine it (this is important, because the game will NEVER let you go to the next step unless you have at minimum examined the problem using the talk button), then you backtrack a bit to get something or, more often, talk to somebody. When Dink talks to a character after encountering a problem, he always begins, "Can you help me?" He says this so many times during this DMOD that it's practically the mod's catchphrase. It's rarely difficult to figure out what you should do next, but usually, you have no reason to suspect that the person you have to talk to can help. In several cases, they've had nothing to say to you so far except something along the lines of "Why are you talking to me? Go away." I got a sense that these characters were cosmically aware of their existence as plot devices, and that they were positively annoyed that you'd speak to them when it wasn't their moment to move the plot forward. Anyway, the only thing that made it easy to figure out what to do next was a metagamer's sense of "okay, I get how this works, I probably have to talk to that guy in the house I passed a minute ago," and that's a bit of a drag.
Sometimes it was difficult to figure out how to get to the next "Can I help you?" I'd know who Dink was going to say it to, but first I'd have to do something obscure, like punch a rock (not hit it with the sword, but punch it specifically). On two occasions, you have to walk into a trap and get hurt by it before Dink will think to ask somebody for help. One one of those occasions, the trap is just a big fire in front of you. This does not make any sense at all, you guys.
Dink Smallwood: master of understatement.
As for that one bug I ran into, I had the screen fail to fade up after it faded down during a cutscene. I'm betting that the author forgot to freeze Dink again after the screen changed, and my quick pressing of the talk button interrupted the script before it faded up. I was only able to continue by inputting the fade_up command using the console. Boy, manually adding the console to the Ulitmate Cheat sure has come in handy.
That one complaint aside, this is still a pretty solid DMOD, especially for a first effort. I really liked the music selections, even if I'd heard most of them before, and the map was well-polished.
214: Fifteen Tasks of Dink (Demo) Author: Ambikesh (Dinkme) Release Date: May 7, 2005
"Papa Bear is coming to town"
The author of "Fifteen Tasks of Dink" is the same Ambikesh who made "Goblin Castle," the worst DMOD I've ever seen due to its near-complete lack of content. Fortunately, this demo has quite a bit more to it.
For starters, this DMOD has a new status bar. I've got to say, it's one of the nicer-looking ones I've seen. It's from Simon Klaebe's "Belgotha graphics" pack, and it looks swell.
Customers? There aren't even any CHAIRS in your bar, man!
In "Fifteen Tasks," Dink hears a magically-transmitted voice in his head that tells him to complete various tasks. In completing these tasks, we're told that Dink is to retrieve fifteen magic gems. There's one task and zero gems in this demo, and it took me twenty minutes to beat, so fifteen sounds like kind of a lot. The task in the demo has Dink going up against a peasant rebellion who has kidnapped the King. The rebellion turns out to actually be led by a goblin, and Dink says, "I should have known!" which seems kind of racist, especially considering that it's a goblin that helps Dink infiltrate the rebel headquarters by telling him the password. Oh wait, come to think of it, maybe that's why he thinks he should have known. Never mind.
BEST. PASSWORD. EVER. Oh, and those houses are another new graphic for this DMOD. They're very simple and kind of odd, but at least they're in that pre-rendered 3D like the Dink graphics.
This game makes some faulty assumptions about what the player is going to do. You're told to go kill a dragon. I went and did so, and when I came back, Dink claimed that he won with the "help of helfire magic." I had no such magic; I just hacked at the sucker with a longsword. After that, though, the boss was too difficult for me to handle. I decided to grind until I got enough gold to buy what the DMOD calls the "greensaber" (Redink1's Dinksaber again); oddly, I checked my inventory in the middle of my grinding session and noticed it was already there. The boss was really easy with it, but nothing happens when you win. An abrupt end, even for a demo.
...Yes. Yes, I am the new secretary. This is my secretary's sword. I use it to... shred... documents.
Incidentally, this DMOD contains the weirdest riddle since "DWTD," and I wanted to share it with you. "Who is bigger: Mr. Bigger or Master Bigger?" The correct answer is Master Bigger - "because he's a little bigger." I don't get it. The joke is obviously that he's Mr. Bigger's son, hence a "little Bigger," but I don't see how I was supposed to know that from "Master Bigger."
Even knowing this is a demo, it feels unfinished. There are a fair number of hardness errors, and when you leave the initial town area, you find that it is surrounded almost entirely by invisible walls. It's not a bad DMOD, though; considering the author's previous work, it's a masterpiece by comparison. It just didn't make a big impression on me apart from the new status bar. I kind of like the concept of a mysterious voice telling Dink what to do - who is it, and what's their real motive? - but nothing is done with it here. The voice only speaks to Dink once.
215: Terrania Author: Carrie Ann Burton Release Date: May 7, 2005
"Perfect! I suck!"
In some ways, "Terrania" follows the pattern of Carrie's other DMODs. It's another simple mod in which Dink travels through an unusual setting with new graphics. However, this one is significantly longer and more involved than the author's previous efforts. This isn't to say that it's particularly long or complicated, but there's quite a bit more to it than the "walk several screens, then do one thing" that could serve as a walkthrough for the others. There are some monsters to fight and a few puzzles to solve.
This time out, Dink falls through the ground and ends up in an otherworldly subterranean land called Terrania. I really enjoyed this imaginative setting, which pairs a muted background with unusual shapes and bright colors. Houses are big, brightly colored spheres and fountains cycle through various colors like a night show at a lake. I've rarely seen anything like it before, although I am reminded of the Funkotronian Moon from Toejam and Earl: Panic on Funkotron for the Sega Genesis. Some reviewers complained about the music, calling it "flat," but I thought it complemented the atmosphere well.
Carrie's signature beavers are back and, according to the readme, "bigger AND fuzzier."
Down, boy!
I got completely stuck in the first part of this DMOD. You're supposed to find a cave and fight a bonca, but I couldn't find a way past a pile of rocks that were in the way. There's no walkthrough and not a single post on the forum explaining the way past this, so after spending way too much time trying to figure out how to get by, I cheated. I didn't have any more problems in the rest of the DMOD.
After the first section, Dink also encounters a tiny town full of tiny people, where he has to find a saw in order to help one of those ubiquitous bridge builders.
Haha, wordplay.
In the last section, you'll want to fight some boncas in order to make enough gold to buy Hellfire, which makes the stone giant boss a lot less tedious. The stone giant is also a witch, which is even funnier than the goblin pirate from "Golden Buddha."
But where's her witch's brew?
In addition to the interesting setting, there was also some amusing dialogue. My favorite character was a miserable little man Dink may find walking around.
Dink: So,have you had any cool adventures?
Man: No,I am a dull,dull man..
Dink: Why?
Man: Because I'm cursed!
Dink: How did that happen?
Man: I was born!
Cracks me up. Maybe I'm weird, though.
Yeah, I really like this one for the colorful setting. I wish I knew how to beat it without cheating, though.
This is apparently Libby. My goodness.
"Can you help me?"
"Quest for the Gems" is the first DMOD by everybody's favorite misspelled footbone. It's a pretty straightforward DMOD, but longer than I expected (it took me 37 minutes).
The title makes one expect yet another hunt for the Chaos Emeralds of the Week, but that's not quite what's going on here. The gems in this DMOD are not talismans of magical power, but mere valuable precious gems. The gems have been stolen from people and mines, and Dink is sent to help mainly because the authorities are concerned that, with everyone having their wealth stolen, they won't be able to pay their taxes.
They take taxes very seriously around here.
Dink is not convinced. He asks the King twice in the intro whether some kind of evil wizard is involved. His instincts don't fail him - of COURSE there's an evil wizard. Throughout the DMOD, there are short cutscenes of the wizard's minions bringing him more stolen gems. This always causes him to exclaim something about how he now nearly has enough to complete his evil master plan. What does this evil plan entail? How do a bunch of pretty, expensive rocks help him complete it? The game makes absolutely no effort to answer these questions.
As has been demonstrated several times, Dink knows how this works by now.
It's a pretty likeable adventure. The maps look nice and polished. I only ran into one bug. Maybe it's a bit too easy, but I will usually take that over too hard. The dialogues are all rather simple and short, but they don't all have to be talkfests. The only thing I really feel like complaining about is the game's extreme over-reliance on arbitrary triggers.
An arbitrary trigger is a device used a bit too commonly in video games in which one event "triggers" another to happen somewhere else even though there's no apparent causal connection between them. A good example from the original Dink Smallwood is the bridge to Windermere, which is broken until you do something totally unrelated. That's actually not a particularly bad example because it diverts the player from something they'll probably come back to in a fairly natural way, but it still lacks a pleasing logic. "Quest for the Gems" uses this kind of plot device so much that it gets quite confusing at times.
Where DOES he put them all?
(Actual game quote: "You can use my pumkins")
In fact, "QftG" is mostly a long string of scenarios that follow the same pattern. Dink runs into some sort of obstacle, you examine it (this is important, because the game will NEVER let you go to the next step unless you have at minimum examined the problem using the talk button), then you backtrack a bit to get something or, more often, talk to somebody. When Dink talks to a character after encountering a problem, he always begins, "Can you help me?" He says this so many times during this DMOD that it's practically the mod's catchphrase. It's rarely difficult to figure out what you should do next, but usually, you have no reason to suspect that the person you have to talk to can help. In several cases, they've had nothing to say to you so far except something along the lines of "Why are you talking to me? Go away." I got a sense that these characters were cosmically aware of their existence as plot devices, and that they were positively annoyed that you'd speak to them when it wasn't their moment to move the plot forward. Anyway, the only thing that made it easy to figure out what to do next was a metagamer's sense of "okay, I get how this works, I probably have to talk to that guy in the house I passed a minute ago," and that's a bit of a drag.
Sometimes it was difficult to figure out how to get to the next "Can I help you?" I'd know who Dink was going to say it to, but first I'd have to do something obscure, like punch a rock (not hit it with the sword, but punch it specifically). On two occasions, you have to walk into a trap and get hurt by it before Dink will think to ask somebody for help. One one of those occasions, the trap is just a big fire in front of you. This does not make any sense at all, you guys.
Dink Smallwood: master of understatement.
As for that one bug I ran into, I had the screen fail to fade up after it faded down during a cutscene. I'm betting that the author forgot to freeze Dink again after the screen changed, and my quick pressing of the talk button interrupted the script before it faded up. I was only able to continue by inputting the fade_up command using the console. Boy, manually adding the console to the Ulitmate Cheat sure has come in handy.
That one complaint aside, this is still a pretty solid DMOD, especially for a first effort. I really liked the music selections, even if I'd heard most of them before, and the map was well-polished.
214: Fifteen Tasks of Dink (Demo) Author: Ambikesh (Dinkme) Release Date: May 7, 2005
"Papa Bear is coming to town"
The author of "Fifteen Tasks of Dink" is the same Ambikesh who made "Goblin Castle," the worst DMOD I've ever seen due to its near-complete lack of content. Fortunately, this demo has quite a bit more to it.
For starters, this DMOD has a new status bar. I've got to say, it's one of the nicer-looking ones I've seen. It's from Simon Klaebe's "Belgotha graphics" pack, and it looks swell.
Customers? There aren't even any CHAIRS in your bar, man!
In "Fifteen Tasks," Dink hears a magically-transmitted voice in his head that tells him to complete various tasks. In completing these tasks, we're told that Dink is to retrieve fifteen magic gems. There's one task and zero gems in this demo, and it took me twenty minutes to beat, so fifteen sounds like kind of a lot. The task in the demo has Dink going up against a peasant rebellion who has kidnapped the King. The rebellion turns out to actually be led by a goblin, and Dink says, "I should have known!" which seems kind of racist, especially considering that it's a goblin that helps Dink infiltrate the rebel headquarters by telling him the password. Oh wait, come to think of it, maybe that's why he thinks he should have known. Never mind.
BEST. PASSWORD. EVER. Oh, and those houses are another new graphic for this DMOD. They're very simple and kind of odd, but at least they're in that pre-rendered 3D like the Dink graphics.
This game makes some faulty assumptions about what the player is going to do. You're told to go kill a dragon. I went and did so, and when I came back, Dink claimed that he won with the "help of helfire magic." I had no such magic; I just hacked at the sucker with a longsword. After that, though, the boss was too difficult for me to handle. I decided to grind until I got enough gold to buy what the DMOD calls the "greensaber" (Redink1's Dinksaber again); oddly, I checked my inventory in the middle of my grinding session and noticed it was already there. The boss was really easy with it, but nothing happens when you win. An abrupt end, even for a demo.
...Yes. Yes, I am the new secretary. This is my secretary's sword. I use it to... shred... documents.
Incidentally, this DMOD contains the weirdest riddle since "DWTD," and I wanted to share it with you. "Who is bigger: Mr. Bigger or Master Bigger?" The correct answer is Master Bigger - "because he's a little bigger." I don't get it. The joke is obviously that he's Mr. Bigger's son, hence a "little Bigger," but I don't see how I was supposed to know that from "Master Bigger."
Even knowing this is a demo, it feels unfinished. There are a fair number of hardness errors, and when you leave the initial town area, you find that it is surrounded almost entirely by invisible walls. It's not a bad DMOD, though; considering the author's previous work, it's a masterpiece by comparison. It just didn't make a big impression on me apart from the new status bar. I kind of like the concept of a mysterious voice telling Dink what to do - who is it, and what's their real motive? - but nothing is done with it here. The voice only speaks to Dink once.
215: Terrania Author: Carrie Ann Burton Release Date: May 7, 2005
"Perfect! I suck!"
In some ways, "Terrania" follows the pattern of Carrie's other DMODs. It's another simple mod in which Dink travels through an unusual setting with new graphics. However, this one is significantly longer and more involved than the author's previous efforts. This isn't to say that it's particularly long or complicated, but there's quite a bit more to it than the "walk several screens, then do one thing" that could serve as a walkthrough for the others. There are some monsters to fight and a few puzzles to solve.
This time out, Dink falls through the ground and ends up in an otherworldly subterranean land called Terrania. I really enjoyed this imaginative setting, which pairs a muted background with unusual shapes and bright colors. Houses are big, brightly colored spheres and fountains cycle through various colors like a night show at a lake. I've rarely seen anything like it before, although I am reminded of the Funkotronian Moon from Toejam and Earl: Panic on Funkotron for the Sega Genesis. Some reviewers complained about the music, calling it "flat," but I thought it complemented the atmosphere well.
Carrie's signature beavers are back and, according to the readme, "bigger AND fuzzier."
Down, boy!
I got completely stuck in the first part of this DMOD. You're supposed to find a cave and fight a bonca, but I couldn't find a way past a pile of rocks that were in the way. There's no walkthrough and not a single post on the forum explaining the way past this, so after spending way too much time trying to figure out how to get by, I cheated. I didn't have any more problems in the rest of the DMOD.
After the first section, Dink also encounters a tiny town full of tiny people, where he has to find a saw in order to help one of those ubiquitous bridge builders.
Haha, wordplay.
In the last section, you'll want to fight some boncas in order to make enough gold to buy Hellfire, which makes the stone giant boss a lot less tedious. The stone giant is also a witch, which is even funnier than the goblin pirate from "Golden Buddha."
But where's her witch's brew?
In addition to the interesting setting, there was also some amusing dialogue. My favorite character was a miserable little man Dink may find walking around.
Dink: So,have you had any cool adventures?
Man: No,I am a dull,dull man..
Dink: Why?
Man: Because I'm cursed!
Dink: How did that happen?
Man: I was born!
Cracks me up. Maybe I'm weird, though.
Yeah, I really like this one for the colorful setting. I wish I knew how to beat it without cheating, though.
This is apparently Libby. My goodness.
