1st place
Basilisk Smile, by SabreTrout.2nd place
Fall of Tahmar, by Marpro.3rd place
Prelude, by joshriot.Congratulations!
For the rest of the results, staff comments, and the voting methodology, check out the comments.
1. Basilisk Smile (7)
"Good implentation of failure as a concept.""Rather sad, and it really feels like a failure D-Mod. Sadly, it is a really quite on the short side, and a bit buggy (hardness errors, etc)."
"Mystery Island-esque. A tad longer would've been nicer, but given the time restrictions, I'm glad it went to killing bugs than length."
"While the puzzles are interesting, the storyline is better. It at least kept me wanting to figure out how to save the village."
2. Fall of Tahmar (11)
"Not bad, but more like a regular DMOD with some tougher elements.""Music fits extremely well. The work put into mapping is complete, but the scripting has work to be desired."
"Flopper the Killer Fish is awesome. And the rest of the (fairly large) D-Mod is really quite good."
"Once you reach the final area, it becomes painfully obvious how the rest of the story is going to play out... but Marpro provides an excellent environment for it to take place in; you can really tell he put a lot of work and detail into that map. Very rarely in Dink is it a joy to just explore an environment."
3. Prelude (11)
"The introduction was quite excellent, with the moon rising with a nice graphical effect. The new inventory system worked surprisingly well, and I like how I was rewarded for exploring every nook-and-cranny of the map.""Way too long intro. Lots of new stuff here, music, graphics, but the dialogue and cut scenes are way too long. Still the dmod made me laugh a lot."
"Saves are limited to scrolls that disappear when you use them... this is enormously bad design choice in my book. Because of the game requires the slightly unstable Dink Aural+.exe to hear the .mp3 music, the game crashed at least once on me... well between points where I could save."
"A tad too much running around (no pun intended), but overall the story flows well."
4. If Ducks Ruled the World (15)
"Okay. Too much running around through giant mazes.""Still it was at least kind of fun... if you did follow the walkthrough. I did enjoy killing the endboss, and the music was pretty good."
"This D-Mod is very well made, with a glaring flaw: there is no way I would have the patience to complete it without the (superb) walkthrough."
"Liked this one a lot, but once again it felt more like a normal DMOD. Could've had a timer counting down all the time that would've helped with the need to complete by a certain time."
5. Honor Quest (17)
"The premise of the story is kind of interesting, but a breaks a lot with past characterization... especially with Dink. On top of that, there's very little direction in what the player is supposed to do.""...mostly interesting puzzles, decent music, the mana bar looks cool, and it probably has the most interesting story out of all of the entrants. But, it is frustratingly unbalanced... I wished the mana bar would refill gradually, or maybe pillbugs would drop little blue hearts to help."
"Very Good as an alternate Hero DMOD. Liked the mana etc, but as a Failure DMOD it didn't ring as true..."
6. Return to Rathor (23)
"Extremely unclear objective from the beginning... Author seems to favor elves, which isn't very nice.
""...the plot doesn't really make much sense. Why does Dink get the snow scroll? But, some of the screens looked pretty good, there were a few goodies to find, and some of the music was interesting."
"Just when you're expecting a little more, it suddenly ends with no real explanation."
"Beavers were interesting."
"Bonus points for beavers... loss of points for a reference to a naked joshriot."
7. Ex-Peppermint (29)
"Post-modernism arrives to Dink Smallwood. But, it is sadly lacking in the entertainment department.""Unclear why the player is playing this d-mod."
"It's kind of like the author was aiming for something like Dry or The Quest for Cheese... but ended up hitting somewhere around Baywatch Isle."
"Hmmm, way too funky and I got stuck on a screenlock which didn't seem to have an exit, early on in the game. Sense of failure came from very tough monsters and little life to start with."
8. Attack of the Evil Wizard (21)
"This dmod was too broken to review sufficiently... Sorry.""Multiple hardness errors, and signs can't be talked to. 0 health does not kill Dink. Unclear objective."
"If you die on a screen but have a small heart from one of the enemies still there you can collect that and keep playing, which I believe is a bug."
"Sadly, unplayable in the version released for the contest."
Voting Methodology
Eligible staff members were given a choice to vote for the D-Mods, ranking them from 1-8. Values were assigned for their choices from 1 to 8, the results tallied, with the lowest overall score winning fame and fortune. In the case of the tie for 2nd place, my vote 'counted' more (as mentioned in the original rules).The votes:
| Merlin | redink1 | SimonK | Striker | Total | |
| Basilisk Smile | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 7 |
| Fall of Tahmar | 4 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 11 |
| Prelude | 2 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 11 |
| If Ducks Ruled the World | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 15 |
| The Honor Quest | 3 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 17 |
| Return to Rathor | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 23 |
| Ex-Peppermint | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 29 |
| Attack of the Evil Wizard | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 31 |
