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December 18th 2014, 04:17 AM
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CocoMonkey
Bard He/Him United States
Please Cindy, say the whole name each time. 
288: Hotel of the Middle Night Author: Skull Release Date: October 31, 2008
"I gotta solve this out! Or I could just leave!"

I had this one's release date wrong when I drew up my list thanks to there not being a news post about it until December. But it turns out that this spooky mystery involving a ghost and a vampire was a Halloween release after all.


It's simple, but I like this title screen for some reason.

Dink stops at a hotel for some beer and some rest, but wakes up upon hearing a scream. He learns that the place has a dark incident in its past. And then he starts finding the bodies.


Wow, this guy was like a piƱata full of blood.

If it were me, I'd get the Hell out of there at that point, but Dink insists on poking around. Some of the specific details you learn early on may lead you to believe you're investigating a complex mystery, but it turns out to be revealed in a simple way. It turns out that people from that long-ago incident have returned to the hotel as undead creatures. Dink doesn't long survive this discovery, I'm afraid.

I'm not spelling out the entire plot here because it's interesting to see on your own, although I did have some trouble understanding it at first due to some odd dialogue. For example, it's said of a certain woman that she couldn't take care of her child because she "was broken." In context, I wasn't quite sure what that meant.

Early in the game, conversations take place entirely in choice statements, and you have frequent opportunities to choose what Dink says, although your choices don't really seem to have an effect on the story. It's nice to have different conversational choices. It makes it feel a bit more like an adventure game. I think it probably would have been better to have the dialogue appear above characters' heads as normal after the player makes their choice, however.

The grounds around the hotel use VonZeppelin's night tiles, which do a pretty nice job of making it look like nighttime. I'm surprised that nobody had used these tiles between their release in 2006 and now. Aside from the tiles, however, the outside map is quite boring - a big square island with few features.


It's only too bad that trees and other objects still look as if the sun is shining on them. Making it look like nighttime is hard.

"Hotel of the Middle Night" is a non-combat DMOD, so the challenge is all about figuring out what to do next. It's all straightforward and easy except for two spots. First, Dink has to go find a key, but you're given no clue as to where it might be. Even if you walk right past the location of the key, it's easy to miss it, so this is frustrating - I don't think that "find the tiny shiny spot" is a good puzzle. The other problem comes near the end.


Wait, WHAT? Seriously?

You get just five seconds to figure out what to do here, or you die. I really don't think that's enough time. I had never found a savebot in this game. It turns out that you can save by examining the bed, but there's no way for the player to know this unless you stumble across it by accident; even the readme doesn't tell you. Screwing up here is therefore going to mean starting over for most players. It's not fair game design to put a player on the spot like this unless they can retry more or less immediately. I'd feel differently about it if there were an obvious savebot in the previous room - or at all, really. Fortunately, a walkthrough is available.

The indoor screens have some major hardness problems. There are large areas of invisible hardness, so Dink appears to be walking into invisible walls. At least one of the rooms has a hardness hole that allows you to walk through the wall into a different screen that you're not supposed to be able to reach yet.

This is still another big step for Skull, who people probably didn't expect much from after his early DMODs; indeed, it's been rare to see an author put out Award of Badness-level stuff and then go on to improve very much, so Skull deserves credit for keeping at it.

--

**The DMOD Drought Diaries**
~Chapter 3a: For Real This Time (2008-2009)~

"Hotel of the Middle Night" marked the end of 2008's sparse release schedule. 2009 would prove to be a surprising resurgence for the already 11-year-old community, but it sure didn't start out that way. I've checked and re-checked, and this time I'm sure than 2006's record DMOD drought was broken (I know I'm probably the only one who cares about this, but I do try to get my facts straight). 200 days passed between the Halloween release of "Hotel of the Middle Night" and "Infinidink" in May of 2009, nearly doubling the 2006 gap.

There just was not a lot going on in the Dink community at this time. Dan Walma had stepped down and made himself scarce. Joshriot's DDC contest inspired a few to start DMODs, but nothing came of it. Skull took a break from DMOD-making after a virus wiped out all of his unfinished projects. Even activity on the forum was down. Christiaan Janssen discusses the downturn here; I'm not sure how he came up with his prediction of increased activity in 2009 and 2010, but it turned out to be on the money.

===2009===

2009 doubled up on the previous year, seeing the release of 18 DMODs. It reached this mark without the support of a DMOD contest, and despite having 0 DMODs released before the month of May.

289: Infinidink Author: Wesley McElwee Release Date: May 19, 2009
"The ducks are getting angrier"

REPUTATION NOTE: This DMOD is one of the select group with a score of 9.0 or better (9.0) on The Dink Network.

Well, it says the average is 9.0, anyway. I don't see how it gets there with one 8.6 and one 9.0 review. Is there another review lurking unseen in the marshes of miasma?

Wesley released this as a side project while working on a remake of "Friends Beyond 2." He said that he was inspired to make something quick by the lack of DMOD releases. Afterward, Wes had a kid and decided (understandably) that DMOD development was no longer a priority. Let's hear it for side projects; they have the virtue of actually getting released.


Ooh, shiny.

"Infinidink" has, by its own admission, no plot. It's just a game where you beat up enemies until you can't anymore. Dink walks around a loop of screens, and the enemies that generate get tougher and tougher. It isn't too hard until the casters start showing up, but it gets pretty brutal from there. When you die, you are given a score, which is saved to a high score list. There's only one save slot so that you can always see your high scores.


Here are the scores I managed on my first couple of tries.

Before you start, you get to have a little conversation with a pig, who lets you choose some options. You can choose to be a weapon specialist, a jack of all trades, or a master of magic. The master of magic has access to a large number of spells, including a spread-shot fireball, a powerful lightning bolt, a shield that increases your defense, a spell that confuses enemies, and a healing spell.


BOOM BOOM BOOM! Mr. Dink is a wonder!

Unfortunately, this isn't as great as it sounds. In addition to your magic meter, you have to have enough MP to cast a spell. The MP counter in the lower left ticks up slowly. It's there so that the game doesn't become a joke with all those powerful spells, but in practice, it means you'll mostly be using melee attacks and saving your magic for healing.

The weapon specialist gets better stats and a nice sword, but this class is at a huge disadvantage because of the lack of reliable healing. Still, the sword is a big improvement over having to punch things, which leaves jack of all trades, which gets weaker magic and a weaker sword, as the best class. At least, it would if it weren't for a bug that lets you keep any weapons and magic you've been given if you change your class. The weapon specialist still can't cast spells (no MP), but the master of magic can take that sword, so this is probably the way to go.


The fighting starts out slow, but it can get pretty intense!

Enemies give you no experience, but they will rarely drop a bit of gold. On certain screens, you can pay an old person to allow you access to a screen where you can fight some pillbugs and earn a stat boost and a new weapon, spell or both. This is the only use for gold and the only way to improve your character.

I didn't try very hard to get a high score, but if you do want to do as well as possible, you'll definitely want to stop when you clear a screen and wait around until you can restore all of your health. Unfortunately, this involves quite a lot of tedious waiting. It would have been better to either allow the player to instantly restore their health upon clearing a screen or to disallow healing in this manner.

One thing you're not supposed to kill are the ducks. Ducks will spawn along with enemies, and every time one is killed, the ducks all become larger and do more touch damage (although they still won't deliberately attack you). You can reset the ducks between runs by asking a duck statue for forgiveness. It's a nice extra bit of flavor.


This can't be good...

While I played, numbers kept coming up at the side of the screen with the letters S and V between them. I don't know what they meant, but they kept overlapping, and it really detracted from the presentation, which is otherwise pretty good. I like the status bar, and Dink's text has been changed from the usual screaming yellow to a softer new yellowish-orange color.

This is the best "just kill things" sort of DMOD so far. It has a nice set of options, works well at its core, and is replayable thanks to the high score lists. Having said that, it does get boring after a little while. Maybe if there were some kind of high score competition, I'd play some more.