Reply to Re: Crazy Old Tim Plays All the DMODs of 2006
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241: The Gold Knight Agency (Demo) Author: Robj Release Date: October 21, 2006
"Ahh, GODDAMNIT"
DMOD Demos: do authors ever really intend on finishing them? Robj didn't. The description plainly says that it's a demo because he "couldn't be bothered to finish it." This is the first of three DMODs in a row in 2006 that were released as demos.
There have been DMOD demos that were later released as a full game, but not many. I have compiled what I believe to be a complete list:
4/21/98: Dink's Doppleganger (okay, so "full" was actually unfinished here, but it was still the longest DMOD for quite a while, so I think it should count)
Prophecy of the Ancients (Can't pin down date, but there was a demo for sure)
1/24/00: Quest for Dorinthia Demo (full released just a few days later)
2/15/00: 9 Gems of Life Demo
5/13/00: Stone of Balance Demo
5/20/00: Friends Beyond 2 Demo
6/11/00: Tragic Death of Zink Demo (full released a few days later)
1/31/01: Rings of Destiny Demo
6/23/02: Bane of the Magi Demo (over a year before full!)
7/19/02: Legend of the Pillbug (2nd demo a few days later)
That's a total of ten, two of which came out so close to the full version that it's safe to call the demo completely pointless. A demo hasn't been replaced by a full DMOD since 2003. That's even worse than I'd thought. Some demos may have been released with the intention of increasing motivation to finish the full version, but that clearly doesn't work. Mike Snyder may have set the precedent by releasing the first demo, but at the time he intended to charge money for the full version, so a demo made obvious sense.
Incidentally, I wonder if anybody still has copies of any of those demos. I remember the POTA demo.
Anyway, this is currently the only released DMOD by Robj. You all may know Robj for Let's Plays and rap parodies, both of which are very fun. He's also known for card tricks and cookie hoarding. He still has plans to release more DMODs in the future. Maybe some of them will be out by the time I finish this project.
A better title for "The Gold Knight Agency" would be "Dink Does Boring Chores for Women," because that is literally all you do. By the time the gold knights show up (over 20 minutes in, quite a time to introduce the actual plot), the demo is over.
Mind you, the chores include punching a dragon to death, but this is Dink Smallwood we're talking about.
At the start, you're given a chance to declare yourself a wimp and get a strength boost. The boost is just from 1 point to 3 points, where a reasonable DMOD would start you anyway, so I can't see any reason not to accept.
Libby wants Dink to deliver a letter. Dink and Libby seem to have some kind of weird relationship where she's almost babysitting him, because he won't do anything in the opening segment without going to her for approval. I immediately saw a key to get out of the village, but Dink refused to collect it. Instead, he has to...
1) Go look for his sword and see that it isn't around
2) Go back to Libby and tell her, "Mom," oops, I mean, "Libby, I can't find my sword."
3) Go try to leave the village and discover that the gate is locked.
4) Go tell Libby that the gate is locked.
5) Go ask the neighbor for the key.
6) FINALLY go and get the key he could see for himself the whole damn time. He has to beat up some pillbugs first.
No you don't! What do you even MEAN by that?
It's not much of a stretch for me to imagine this Dink asking Libby for permission to use the bathroom.
Leaving the completely fenced-in village involves, for some reason, traversing an underground tunnel filled with monsters. I beat the dragon with just 1 HP left on my first try, but died on the thorns in the next room and had to restart the DMOD. I said the same thing I quoted Dink as saying in the header.
Dink delivers the letter (it's a birthday card) to a woman named Mary, who promptly starts ordering him around as well. "Get this key," "kill that bonca." Dink decides to obey for... some reason. Maybe he likes getting ordered around by ladies, I don't know. Of course, if you head to the forest first, like I did, Dink won't take the key.
You learn NOTHING! NOTHING!
The second town also has a problem with homeless beggars who accost people and demand money. Dink points out that when you MAKE people give you their money it's called "stealing," but they don't care. Because of this, you can't actually use a healing shop in the town until the DMOD is all but over, which is a drag.
How do they always know how much you're carrying?
Despite my gripes, it's an okay romp. The tiling is iffy in places, but there's at least been more effort to decorate the maps than I usually make. The difficulty is reasonable. Probably the biggest problem is that there are some objects (like trees) that should be hard but aren't. Still, it's not as bad as Robj has led me to believe.
242: Kill Murdoock! 2 (Demo) Author: Neo Release Date: November 11, 2006
"Oh, shut up! It's lovely!"
Even for a demo, this is as short as Hell. There's pretty much nothing here.
First, there are a series of splash screens in which the author repeatedly lies about the DMOD being presented by Twentieth Century Fox.
Haha, no.
Then, there's a brief intro in which Dink buys a new house. A jerk named "Murdoock Junior" shows up an destroys it with lots and lots of fire.
Dick move, bro! Dick move!
Then, Dink finds out that his dad has been found dead in some nearby caverns. Quite a day he's having.
There is something interesting after that. Once Dink leaves the area right outside his house, he comes to a "world map" type screen where everything is scaled down like in many RPGs. There are even periodic random encounters as you wander around on this screen. The encounters are some boncas, some pillbugs, or a slayer. You're screwed if you get the slayer.
I can see my house from here.
There's nowhere to go, however. The only location on the map is Dink's house, where you just came from. I can't imagine what the point was of releasing this as a DMOD. Even as a "world map and random encounter system demonstration," it would've been nice to have at least two locations to visit on the map and some place to heal.
243: Dink Goes Hunting (Demo) Author: Erwin Bosch Release Date: November 14, 2006
"I'd better not go in there before I've reported to the King."
It's been a while since we had a "Dink Goes" title. Here I thought they had fallen out of fashion.
The DMOD doesn't actually have anything to do with hunting as far as I can tell.
Remember how Dink could ask the King to lower taxes back in the original game? Here, the King took his advice too closely to heart, and the kingdom is broke. He sends Dink out to collect 100,000 gold. I'm fine with that concept, although the later revelation that the King has been manipulated into these dumb actions by an unknown force kind of loses me. Since this is a demo, we never learn the ultimate cause of the King's folly.
King Daniel explains that the damage you see was caused by excessive partying. No, really.
This isn't a bad DMOD, and it's got some ambition to it, but I didn't enjoy it. The dialogue was mostly boring, the story made very little sense, and it was sometimes hard to figure out what to do next. I mostly felt frustrated or bored.
Here's a random example of how things just don't make much sense. Dink asks a security guard how they tell whether someone who comes through a teleporter is a "bad person." The response:
There's a magic rock in the room with the telleport..
..wich sort of checks if a person is bad or lying.
With this magic star I read the information of the rock.
But it's too complex to explain further
It's a pretty weak and awfully stretched explanation of something that didn't really require an explanation in the first place. This DMOD is full of stuff like this.
The first area is a typical DMOD sort of village, although it does have a new take on the oft-repeated pig feeding cutscene from the original game. Dink gets his revenge on his latest tormentor by tossing feed at his feet, causing the pigs to nip at his heels.
Fly, my pretties.
I actually got stuck here for an embarrassing amount of time because you're told to find an arrow, and I couldn't find it. It's next to the side of the screen, and it's hard to see. Don't judge me.
I like this makeshift fort from which bandits control this pass. It seems like the platform is made from crates. It's clever.
The second section is more interesting. It's a big city with a lot of things to do. There are a couple of little sidequests, shops where you can buy all the weapons and spells from the original game, and a casino where you can make loads of money. The blackjack from "Initiation" is here, but you're better off just betting the money on coinflips at a nearby machine. It'd be easy to get 100,000 gold if that were your real objective, but by this point the original plot has already been all but forgotten.
This glowy blue fence gates off content that isn't available in the demo. Oooh.
There's also a bar with two floors. On the ground floor are folks who just like to get drunk, but upstairs you can find wizards who drink weaker alcohol with magical properties. It'll raise one of your stats and lower the other two. It didn't seem worth the trouble, though, especially since there's another shop where you can buy potions that temporarily raise your stats.
The King of the land of Thesaurus. Yep, that's what it's called.
In this city, Dink answers to another king. As I said, the original plot is pretty much forgotten as Dink focuses on helping out this city that is increasingly besieged by monsters. The King wants Dink's help, but he insists that Dink train at his training grounds first. The training grounds are broken up into melee, ranged and magic training, which sounds interesting, but they're all nothing but ordinary little areas full of monsters. It's only suggested that you use the designated kind of attack; actually, I used melee attacks on all three tests. I can think of several ways to restrict the player to use a certain kind of attack. It would have been interesting, but just having signs telling you what to use is silly.
This target is just for decoration, but it makes me wonder why there isn't some kind of target range. Incidentally, bows in this DMOD have abandoned the usual bow-power system in favor of a quick trigger.
Dink reports incessantly back to the King. On two separate occasions, he finds an entrance to a new area and, instead of investigating it, says "I'd better report this to the King!" and refuses to enter. Both times, you have to backtrack quite a lot to see the King, who pretty much just says, "Boy, you'd better check it out then!" Argh, what a waste of time.
Eventually, Dink finds an entrance to a HUGE area filled with hundreds of tough, green-tinted pillbugs, boncas and slimes. All you're told is that you're to go train there. I got stuck here for ages. I nearly gave up. At first I was convinced that you had to try and wipe out all the enemies, which would have taken over an hour. Eventually, I found what I was supposed to find, tucked off to one side and very easy to miss. At least this part has a cool MP3 background music - a rock arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon in D. I converted it to .ogg so that I could listen to it in FreeDink, and it makes a great background tune. So much for that rule about MP3s having to be in a separate file, eh?
Anyway, once you've finally found the point to that area, you report back to the King, leave town and the demo ends. This one kind of wore me out, honestly. Again, it isn't a bad DMOD, but I'm glad to be done with it.
"Ahh, GODDAMNIT"
DMOD Demos: do authors ever really intend on finishing them? Robj didn't. The description plainly says that it's a demo because he "couldn't be bothered to finish it." This is the first of three DMODs in a row in 2006 that were released as demos.
There have been DMOD demos that were later released as a full game, but not many. I have compiled what I believe to be a complete list:
4/21/98: Dink's Doppleganger (okay, so "full" was actually unfinished here, but it was still the longest DMOD for quite a while, so I think it should count)
Prophecy of the Ancients (Can't pin down date, but there was a demo for sure)
1/24/00: Quest for Dorinthia Demo (full released just a few days later)
2/15/00: 9 Gems of Life Demo
5/13/00: Stone of Balance Demo
5/20/00: Friends Beyond 2 Demo
6/11/00: Tragic Death of Zink Demo (full released a few days later)
1/31/01: Rings of Destiny Demo
6/23/02: Bane of the Magi Demo (over a year before full!)
7/19/02: Legend of the Pillbug (2nd demo a few days later)
That's a total of ten, two of which came out so close to the full version that it's safe to call the demo completely pointless. A demo hasn't been replaced by a full DMOD since 2003. That's even worse than I'd thought. Some demos may have been released with the intention of increasing motivation to finish the full version, but that clearly doesn't work. Mike Snyder may have set the precedent by releasing the first demo, but at the time he intended to charge money for the full version, so a demo made obvious sense.
Incidentally, I wonder if anybody still has copies of any of those demos. I remember the POTA demo.
Anyway, this is currently the only released DMOD by Robj. You all may know Robj for Let's Plays and rap parodies, both of which are very fun. He's also known for card tricks and cookie hoarding. He still has plans to release more DMODs in the future. Maybe some of them will be out by the time I finish this project.
A better title for "The Gold Knight Agency" would be "Dink Does Boring Chores for Women," because that is literally all you do. By the time the gold knights show up (over 20 minutes in, quite a time to introduce the actual plot), the demo is over.
Mind you, the chores include punching a dragon to death, but this is Dink Smallwood we're talking about.
At the start, you're given a chance to declare yourself a wimp and get a strength boost. The boost is just from 1 point to 3 points, where a reasonable DMOD would start you anyway, so I can't see any reason not to accept.
Libby wants Dink to deliver a letter. Dink and Libby seem to have some kind of weird relationship where she's almost babysitting him, because he won't do anything in the opening segment without going to her for approval. I immediately saw a key to get out of the village, but Dink refused to collect it. Instead, he has to...
1) Go look for his sword and see that it isn't around
2) Go back to Libby and tell her, "Mom," oops, I mean, "Libby, I can't find my sword."
3) Go try to leave the village and discover that the gate is locked.
4) Go tell Libby that the gate is locked.
5) Go ask the neighbor for the key.
6) FINALLY go and get the key he could see for himself the whole damn time. He has to beat up some pillbugs first.
No you don't! What do you even MEAN by that?
It's not much of a stretch for me to imagine this Dink asking Libby for permission to use the bathroom.
Leaving the completely fenced-in village involves, for some reason, traversing an underground tunnel filled with monsters. I beat the dragon with just 1 HP left on my first try, but died on the thorns in the next room and had to restart the DMOD. I said the same thing I quoted Dink as saying in the header.
Dink delivers the letter (it's a birthday card) to a woman named Mary, who promptly starts ordering him around as well. "Get this key," "kill that bonca." Dink decides to obey for... some reason. Maybe he likes getting ordered around by ladies, I don't know. Of course, if you head to the forest first, like I did, Dink won't take the key.
You learn NOTHING! NOTHING!
The second town also has a problem with homeless beggars who accost people and demand money. Dink points out that when you MAKE people give you their money it's called "stealing," but they don't care. Because of this, you can't actually use a healing shop in the town until the DMOD is all but over, which is a drag.
How do they always know how much you're carrying?
Despite my gripes, it's an okay romp. The tiling is iffy in places, but there's at least been more effort to decorate the maps than I usually make. The difficulty is reasonable. Probably the biggest problem is that there are some objects (like trees) that should be hard but aren't. Still, it's not as bad as Robj has led me to believe.
242: Kill Murdoock! 2 (Demo) Author: Neo Release Date: November 11, 2006
"Oh, shut up! It's lovely!"
Even for a demo, this is as short as Hell. There's pretty much nothing here.
First, there are a series of splash screens in which the author repeatedly lies about the DMOD being presented by Twentieth Century Fox.
Haha, no.
Then, there's a brief intro in which Dink buys a new house. A jerk named "Murdoock Junior" shows up an destroys it with lots and lots of fire.
Dick move, bro! Dick move!
Then, Dink finds out that his dad has been found dead in some nearby caverns. Quite a day he's having.
There is something interesting after that. Once Dink leaves the area right outside his house, he comes to a "world map" type screen where everything is scaled down like in many RPGs. There are even periodic random encounters as you wander around on this screen. The encounters are some boncas, some pillbugs, or a slayer. You're screwed if you get the slayer.
I can see my house from here.
There's nowhere to go, however. The only location on the map is Dink's house, where you just came from. I can't imagine what the point was of releasing this as a DMOD. Even as a "world map and random encounter system demonstration," it would've been nice to have at least two locations to visit on the map and some place to heal.
243: Dink Goes Hunting (Demo) Author: Erwin Bosch Release Date: November 14, 2006
"I'd better not go in there before I've reported to the King."
It's been a while since we had a "Dink Goes" title. Here I thought they had fallen out of fashion.
The DMOD doesn't actually have anything to do with hunting as far as I can tell.
Remember how Dink could ask the King to lower taxes back in the original game? Here, the King took his advice too closely to heart, and the kingdom is broke. He sends Dink out to collect 100,000 gold. I'm fine with that concept, although the later revelation that the King has been manipulated into these dumb actions by an unknown force kind of loses me. Since this is a demo, we never learn the ultimate cause of the King's folly.
King Daniel explains that the damage you see was caused by excessive partying. No, really.
This isn't a bad DMOD, and it's got some ambition to it, but I didn't enjoy it. The dialogue was mostly boring, the story made very little sense, and it was sometimes hard to figure out what to do next. I mostly felt frustrated or bored.
Here's a random example of how things just don't make much sense. Dink asks a security guard how they tell whether someone who comes through a teleporter is a "bad person." The response:
There's a magic rock in the room with the telleport..
..wich sort of checks if a person is bad or lying.
With this magic star I read the information of the rock.
But it's too complex to explain further
It's a pretty weak and awfully stretched explanation of something that didn't really require an explanation in the first place. This DMOD is full of stuff like this.
The first area is a typical DMOD sort of village, although it does have a new take on the oft-repeated pig feeding cutscene from the original game. Dink gets his revenge on his latest tormentor by tossing feed at his feet, causing the pigs to nip at his heels.
Fly, my pretties.
I actually got stuck here for an embarrassing amount of time because you're told to find an arrow, and I couldn't find it. It's next to the side of the screen, and it's hard to see. Don't judge me.
I like this makeshift fort from which bandits control this pass. It seems like the platform is made from crates. It's clever.
The second section is more interesting. It's a big city with a lot of things to do. There are a couple of little sidequests, shops where you can buy all the weapons and spells from the original game, and a casino where you can make loads of money. The blackjack from "Initiation" is here, but you're better off just betting the money on coinflips at a nearby machine. It'd be easy to get 100,000 gold if that were your real objective, but by this point the original plot has already been all but forgotten.
This glowy blue fence gates off content that isn't available in the demo. Oooh.
There's also a bar with two floors. On the ground floor are folks who just like to get drunk, but upstairs you can find wizards who drink weaker alcohol with magical properties. It'll raise one of your stats and lower the other two. It didn't seem worth the trouble, though, especially since there's another shop where you can buy potions that temporarily raise your stats.
The King of the land of Thesaurus. Yep, that's what it's called.
In this city, Dink answers to another king. As I said, the original plot is pretty much forgotten as Dink focuses on helping out this city that is increasingly besieged by monsters. The King wants Dink's help, but he insists that Dink train at his training grounds first. The training grounds are broken up into melee, ranged and magic training, which sounds interesting, but they're all nothing but ordinary little areas full of monsters. It's only suggested that you use the designated kind of attack; actually, I used melee attacks on all three tests. I can think of several ways to restrict the player to use a certain kind of attack. It would have been interesting, but just having signs telling you what to use is silly.
This target is just for decoration, but it makes me wonder why there isn't some kind of target range. Incidentally, bows in this DMOD have abandoned the usual bow-power system in favor of a quick trigger.
Dink reports incessantly back to the King. On two separate occasions, he finds an entrance to a new area and, instead of investigating it, says "I'd better report this to the King!" and refuses to enter. Both times, you have to backtrack quite a lot to see the King, who pretty much just says, "Boy, you'd better check it out then!" Argh, what a waste of time.
Eventually, Dink finds an entrance to a HUGE area filled with hundreds of tough, green-tinted pillbugs, boncas and slimes. All you're told is that you're to go train there. I got stuck here for ages. I nearly gave up. At first I was convinced that you had to try and wipe out all the enemies, which would have taken over an hour. Eventually, I found what I was supposed to find, tucked off to one side and very easy to miss. At least this part has a cool MP3 background music - a rock arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon in D. I converted it to .ogg so that I could listen to it in FreeDink, and it makes a great background tune. So much for that rule about MP3s having to be in a separate file, eh?
Anyway, once you've finally found the point to that area, you report back to the King, leave town and the demo ends. This one kind of wore me out, honestly. Again, it isn't a bad DMOD, but I'm glad to be done with it.
