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316: Where's Likko? Author: DinkDude95 Release Date: June 9, 2010
"Piss off, little girl. This table is for big men."
Once upon a time, Simon Klaebe made some graphics of a moogle hero for a D-Mod he was planning to make called "Belgotha." Moogles are those little white critters with bat wings from the Final Fantasy series. In 2004, realizing he'd never finish his D-Mod, he released them to the community. Nobody ever used them until now.
In "Where's Likko," you play as a young female moogle named Mikka who's looking for her missing friend Likko. The moogle graphics look great, and the new tiles are interesting. The D-Mod also uses some other SimonK graphics, including a windmill and something called "Evil Houses." These also look good, but the houses seem out of place. Why would the cute little moogles live in these horrifying domiciles? That sure isn't what "Mog House" looked like in Final Fantasy VII.
Home sweet home, kupo!
The little moogle village is a bit of cutesy fun. All of the moogles are exceedingly nice and polite ("Oh, how wonderful!"). It does bug me a little bit that nobody ever says "kupo." There is a slightly seedy bar in town where some of the moogles can be a tad rude. It's kind of funny to go in there and have everybody tell you how out of place a little girl like you is in this bar full of manly men, because of course the moogles all look exactly the same.
The town is the most interesting part of the map. Most of the map is taken up by a big, sort of maze-y forest area. The forest screens look fine, but there's nothing much going on in them. Wandering back and forth through this large area just feels like a waste of time.
Finding Likko involves helping somebody else first; why, it's none other than Dink Smallwood, who has been turned into a statue somehow. All you have to do to help him is get him some water, which was a slightly frustrating task due to an unintentional bit of misdirection. The bartender tells you that Likko had gotten a bottle of water from the bar before going missing, so naturally you'd just go there for one yourself, right? Nope, you scoop it from a pond instead.
I mean, I wasn't even sure this stuff was water.
I've got only myself to blame for being confused. You can give gold pieces to a homeless moogle in exchange for hints that are quite clear. I was just so sure that I'd get water from the bar. He says they have it!
There's a short segment at the end where you have to avoid attacks from oddly green-tinted stone giants. You can't really attack them, but you could get them to kill one another if you wanted. I'd say that qualifies as combat if you were required to do it, but since you aren't, I guess it's fine. It all took me 18 minutes, but more than half of that was me being stubborn about the water.
The swearing in this D-Mod feels really out of place. Mikka, whose dialogue consists mostly of lines like "Yay! Thank you Mr. Guard!" lets out with an uncensored "What the Mother F***ing hell?!" when the Dink statue talks to her. Swearing doesn't usually bother me at all, but Mikka is such an exceedingly polite character that it makes no sense. You could have some fun with a character who subverts her cuteness with a potty mouth, or by having Dink swear at her and having her respond "Oh my, how rude!", but this is just random, tone-ruining swearing.
This effect of a moogle walking up a spiral staircase is well done. I wish the author had used dnotalk.c to at least change the color of the default messages to match the rest of Mikka's dialogue, though.
It's a fine little romp. There's not a lot to do, but there is some charm to it, and everything works. It's mainly notable as a showcase for Simon Klaebe's graphics, but that's better than being notable for nothing, and they're well-implemented. Still, I didn't find it as interesting as "Corporate Managerialism," with which it tied for last place in the contest. If it deserved last place, though, it's pretty good for that. With the exception of "Computer Virus" in 2003, the "floor" of quality in these Dink Network contests has been remarkably high.
--
Hey, I don't mean to pick on "Where's Likko" in particular here, but let's take a moment to talk about D-Mod readme files. Lots and lots of them contain a weird, useless big ol' block of text. It looks like this, using "Where's Likko" as an example:
Free? ................................. : No, I want you to pay me. >
New map file? ......................... : Yes
Adventure can be finished? ............ : Yes
Estimated solve time? ................. : 30 minutes
Place to save games? .................. : Yes
New sounds? ........................... : Yes
New MIDIs? ............................ : Yes
New graphics? ......................... : Yes
New Dinkc files? ...................... : Yes
New hard.dat file? .................... : Yes, big thank you to redink1 for it.
Nudity in graphics rating? (0 is none) : 0 (0 to 10) <- Yah, I be keeping it PG, guys.
Mature language rating? (0 is none) ... : 4 (0 to 10) <- There's a teensy bit of swearing, but not much.
Author ................................ : DinkDude95
Author's email ........................ : ajbiss@gmail.com
This goes all the way back to Seth Robinson, who included a very similar list of attributes way back in the readme file for "The Search for Milli Vanilli." Fields for "Author's WWW page," "Version of Dink required" and "Requires FULL version?" (did anybody really play D-Mods using the demo?) have been shorn somewhere along the way, but it's otherwise the same in 2010 as it was in 1998. Author after author has copied this block of text and pasted it into their readme without a thought. Why, though? Why have they done this?
Let's go through this line by line. Not since Mike Snyder's experiment with "Dink's Doppleganger" has there been even a shred of doubt that all D-Mods would be free. Very nearly all D-Mods have a new map file, and if you count editing an existing map file as a new one, every last one does. A D-Mod that can't be finished ought to be clearly labeled as such. The estimated solve time is never, ever right. Actually, I'll stop there and just say that none of this is useful information except the author's email address, which you don't need this block of text to include. "New Dinkc files?" is particularly baffling - I think the only D-Mods I've encountered without these are "Doomsday" and "Land of Transforming Ducks," and that tells you all you need to know about whether it makes sense to release a D-Mod without new Dinkc files.
Some of these readmes include the number of map screens, which I guess could be used to compare map sizes, but that doesn't necessarily tell you much about the D-Mod, even in terms of how long it takes to complete. Has anybody ever found this useful? It's not like it can help you decide whether to download a D-Mod, since you can't read it until you've done that already.
You can't really blame Seth too much for making this or Mike Snyder for perpetuating it - things were different back then, and they didn't necessarily know what shape this "D-Mod" thing was going to take. It is really strange, though, that people kept doing it so long after people knew exactly what to expect. I can only call it a ritual. Just say no to these kinds of things in your readme file, kids.
317: The Day after the Middle Night Author: Skull Release Date: June 9, 2010
"And it's still night. It seems like the night is endless."
This is the sequel to Skull's Halloween 2008 D-Mod "Hotel of the Middle Night." This installment is much improved in my opinion, with better dialogue and a more coherent story. The original was also a non-combat D-Mod, but this is even more story-focused, dispensing with puzzles and never displaying the status bar at all. "Day after" outscored "Corporate Managerialism" and "Where's Likko?" by just one point, taking fourth place in the contest.
"The Day after the Middle Night" actually takes place long after "Hotel." Despite the name, it takes place mainly at night - "The Day after" refers to the condition brought about by finally bringing an end to the haunting menace. You control a kid who has come with his friends to explore the abandoned hotel. The story is interspersed with flashbacks where you control other characters as the incident that started this entire mess occurs. The flashbacks answer several questions I had about the vague story in "Hotel," which is a good thing.
I believe I'll have a red...
It's a straightforward D-Mod, and not very long. Awful things happen to the characters. I can't say I found it scary, but I did find the spooky atmosphere entertaining. The silent white screen used as a transition to the flashbacks was a nice effect, and I enjoyed the hallucinations the poor doomed kid had while trapped in the hotel. It was hard to tell what was real at times.
There were some bugs. All of the characters turn into Dink when you push (the kid into a small version of him due to the size setting). Characters' thoughts are represented by text at the top of the screen, which is fine except that the texts can overlap and become unreadable. I had this same problem when I chose to have most text display at the bottom of the screen in my D-Mod "Dinkgon Warrior," which should come out tomorrow; I got around it by killing any sprite with brain 8 (text) before displaying new text.
He's so cute! I just have to pet him!
A bigger problem I ran into is that if you go from the second-to-last screen to the last too quickly, much of the end sequence takes place with the screen faded down. I could still tell what was going on, though, because the characters pretty much narrate it.
If you say so.
One thing bugs me about this series - why does everyone use the phrase "middle night," as in "I'm pretty sure it's middle night?" They mean midnight, right? They must; the phrase "middle night" is so uncommon that the D-Mod itself is on the first page of results on DuckDuckGo. It drives me up a wall.
You should play "Day After the Middle Night" if you like story-based D-Mods and especially if you played the original and were at all interested in its story.
"Piss off, little girl. This table is for big men."
Once upon a time, Simon Klaebe made some graphics of a moogle hero for a D-Mod he was planning to make called "Belgotha." Moogles are those little white critters with bat wings from the Final Fantasy series. In 2004, realizing he'd never finish his D-Mod, he released them to the community. Nobody ever used them until now.
In "Where's Likko," you play as a young female moogle named Mikka who's looking for her missing friend Likko. The moogle graphics look great, and the new tiles are interesting. The D-Mod also uses some other SimonK graphics, including a windmill and something called "Evil Houses." These also look good, but the houses seem out of place. Why would the cute little moogles live in these horrifying domiciles? That sure isn't what "Mog House" looked like in Final Fantasy VII.
Home sweet home, kupo!
The little moogle village is a bit of cutesy fun. All of the moogles are exceedingly nice and polite ("Oh, how wonderful!"). It does bug me a little bit that nobody ever says "kupo." There is a slightly seedy bar in town where some of the moogles can be a tad rude. It's kind of funny to go in there and have everybody tell you how out of place a little girl like you is in this bar full of manly men, because of course the moogles all look exactly the same.
The town is the most interesting part of the map. Most of the map is taken up by a big, sort of maze-y forest area. The forest screens look fine, but there's nothing much going on in them. Wandering back and forth through this large area just feels like a waste of time.
Finding Likko involves helping somebody else first; why, it's none other than Dink Smallwood, who has been turned into a statue somehow. All you have to do to help him is get him some water, which was a slightly frustrating task due to an unintentional bit of misdirection. The bartender tells you that Likko had gotten a bottle of water from the bar before going missing, so naturally you'd just go there for one yourself, right? Nope, you scoop it from a pond instead.
I mean, I wasn't even sure this stuff was water.
I've got only myself to blame for being confused. You can give gold pieces to a homeless moogle in exchange for hints that are quite clear. I was just so sure that I'd get water from the bar. He says they have it!
There's a short segment at the end where you have to avoid attacks from oddly green-tinted stone giants. You can't really attack them, but you could get them to kill one another if you wanted. I'd say that qualifies as combat if you were required to do it, but since you aren't, I guess it's fine. It all took me 18 minutes, but more than half of that was me being stubborn about the water.
The swearing in this D-Mod feels really out of place. Mikka, whose dialogue consists mostly of lines like "Yay! Thank you Mr. Guard!" lets out with an uncensored "What the Mother F***ing hell?!" when the Dink statue talks to her. Swearing doesn't usually bother me at all, but Mikka is such an exceedingly polite character that it makes no sense. You could have some fun with a character who subverts her cuteness with a potty mouth, or by having Dink swear at her and having her respond "Oh my, how rude!", but this is just random, tone-ruining swearing.
This effect of a moogle walking up a spiral staircase is well done. I wish the author had used dnotalk.c to at least change the color of the default messages to match the rest of Mikka's dialogue, though.
It's a fine little romp. There's not a lot to do, but there is some charm to it, and everything works. It's mainly notable as a showcase for Simon Klaebe's graphics, but that's better than being notable for nothing, and they're well-implemented. Still, I didn't find it as interesting as "Corporate Managerialism," with which it tied for last place in the contest. If it deserved last place, though, it's pretty good for that. With the exception of "Computer Virus" in 2003, the "floor" of quality in these Dink Network contests has been remarkably high.
--
Hey, I don't mean to pick on "Where's Likko" in particular here, but let's take a moment to talk about D-Mod readme files. Lots and lots of them contain a weird, useless big ol' block of text. It looks like this, using "Where's Likko" as an example:
Free? ................................. : No, I want you to pay me. >
New map file? ......................... : Yes
Adventure can be finished? ............ : Yes
Estimated solve time? ................. : 30 minutes
Place to save games? .................. : Yes
New sounds? ........................... : Yes
New MIDIs? ............................ : Yes
New graphics? ......................... : Yes
New Dinkc files? ...................... : Yes
New hard.dat file? .................... : Yes, big thank you to redink1 for it.
Nudity in graphics rating? (0 is none) : 0 (0 to 10) <- Yah, I be keeping it PG, guys.
Mature language rating? (0 is none) ... : 4 (0 to 10) <- There's a teensy bit of swearing, but not much.
Author ................................ : DinkDude95
Author's email ........................ : ajbiss@gmail.com
This goes all the way back to Seth Robinson, who included a very similar list of attributes way back in the readme file for "The Search for Milli Vanilli." Fields for "Author's WWW page," "Version of Dink required" and "Requires FULL version?" (did anybody really play D-Mods using the demo?) have been shorn somewhere along the way, but it's otherwise the same in 2010 as it was in 1998. Author after author has copied this block of text and pasted it into their readme without a thought. Why, though? Why have they done this?
Let's go through this line by line. Not since Mike Snyder's experiment with "Dink's Doppleganger" has there been even a shred of doubt that all D-Mods would be free. Very nearly all D-Mods have a new map file, and if you count editing an existing map file as a new one, every last one does. A D-Mod that can't be finished ought to be clearly labeled as such. The estimated solve time is never, ever right. Actually, I'll stop there and just say that none of this is useful information except the author's email address, which you don't need this block of text to include. "New Dinkc files?" is particularly baffling - I think the only D-Mods I've encountered without these are "Doomsday" and "Land of Transforming Ducks," and that tells you all you need to know about whether it makes sense to release a D-Mod without new Dinkc files.
Some of these readmes include the number of map screens, which I guess could be used to compare map sizes, but that doesn't necessarily tell you much about the D-Mod, even in terms of how long it takes to complete. Has anybody ever found this useful? It's not like it can help you decide whether to download a D-Mod, since you can't read it until you've done that already.
You can't really blame Seth too much for making this or Mike Snyder for perpetuating it - things were different back then, and they didn't necessarily know what shape this "D-Mod" thing was going to take. It is really strange, though, that people kept doing it so long after people knew exactly what to expect. I can only call it a ritual. Just say no to these kinds of things in your readme file, kids.
317: The Day after the Middle Night Author: Skull Release Date: June 9, 2010
"And it's still night. It seems like the night is endless."
This is the sequel to Skull's Halloween 2008 D-Mod "Hotel of the Middle Night." This installment is much improved in my opinion, with better dialogue and a more coherent story. The original was also a non-combat D-Mod, but this is even more story-focused, dispensing with puzzles and never displaying the status bar at all. "Day after" outscored "Corporate Managerialism" and "Where's Likko?" by just one point, taking fourth place in the contest.
"The Day after the Middle Night" actually takes place long after "Hotel." Despite the name, it takes place mainly at night - "The Day after" refers to the condition brought about by finally bringing an end to the haunting menace. You control a kid who has come with his friends to explore the abandoned hotel. The story is interspersed with flashbacks where you control other characters as the incident that started this entire mess occurs. The flashbacks answer several questions I had about the vague story in "Hotel," which is a good thing.
I believe I'll have a red...
It's a straightforward D-Mod, and not very long. Awful things happen to the characters. I can't say I found it scary, but I did find the spooky atmosphere entertaining. The silent white screen used as a transition to the flashbacks was a nice effect, and I enjoyed the hallucinations the poor doomed kid had while trapped in the hotel. It was hard to tell what was real at times.
There were some bugs. All of the characters turn into Dink when you push (the kid into a small version of him due to the size setting). Characters' thoughts are represented by text at the top of the screen, which is fine except that the texts can overlap and become unreadable. I had this same problem when I chose to have most text display at the bottom of the screen in my D-Mod "Dinkgon Warrior," which should come out tomorrow; I got around it by killing any sprite with brain 8 (text) before displaying new text.
He's so cute! I just have to pet him!
A bigger problem I ran into is that if you go from the second-to-last screen to the last too quickly, much of the end sequence takes place with the screen faded down. I could still tell what was going on, though, because the characters pretty much narrate it.
If you say so.
One thing bugs me about this series - why does everyone use the phrase "middle night," as in "I'm pretty sure it's middle night?" They mean midnight, right? They must; the phrase "middle night" is so uncommon that the D-Mod itself is on the first page of results on DuckDuckGo. It drives me up a wall.
You should play "Day After the Middle Night" if you like story-based D-Mods and especially if you played the original and were at all interested in its story.
