Crystal of the Gu
This dmod essentially turns Dink into an evade-the-bouncing-balls game. What little storyline there is, is only there to justify the game itself.
The Good:
It's lots of fun, if you have time to kill, and feel like honing your hand-eye coordination skills. The variety of bouncing colors and patterns are pretty, I guess. The game also gets progressively difficult as you go on, although after getting the herb boots and the hearts, things just become rather trivial.
The Bad:
Not much replayable value here. The difficulty is quite high, and unless you're into this sorta thing, you probably wouldn't want to do it again after seeing the ending.
Speaking of which, there isn't much of an ending, just a little joke to reward for your skillful evasion techniques, I suppose.
IMNSHO:
If the author *really* wants to go all-out on this concept, though, he should add more depth to the game. Namely, more screens, and a more gradual progression in difficulty level. More complications thrown into the mix, say a screen where you need to work your way to a switch in order to open the exit door. Or a screen with adjustable mirrors to redirect the bouncing things (but not without potentially nasty side-effects, deliberately worked into the mix, of course). Maybe an optional "backdoor" item for, say, freezing the balls for 1 second. Or, if you're into masochism, navigate a maze whilst avoiding the bouncing things. With pit traps that send you a few screens back. Muahahaha...
Ahem. Back to the review, this is an OK dmod, I guess. This isn't a real adventure or anything, just (ab)using the dink engine to do curious things. That gives it a score of 7.0 in my books. If the author had gone all-out and did some of those things I suggested (and perhaps much more), this would've earned a much higher score in the non-adventure DMOD category.
The Good:
It's lots of fun, if you have time to kill, and feel like honing your hand-eye coordination skills. The variety of bouncing colors and patterns are pretty, I guess. The game also gets progressively difficult as you go on, although after getting the herb boots and the hearts, things just become rather trivial.
The Bad:
Not much replayable value here. The difficulty is quite high, and unless you're into this sorta thing, you probably wouldn't want to do it again after seeing the ending.
Speaking of which, there isn't much of an ending, just a little joke to reward for your skillful evasion techniques, I suppose.
IMNSHO:
If the author *really* wants to go all-out on this concept, though, he should add more depth to the game. Namely, more screens, and a more gradual progression in difficulty level. More complications thrown into the mix, say a screen where you need to work your way to a switch in order to open the exit door. Or a screen with adjustable mirrors to redirect the bouncing things (but not without potentially nasty side-effects, deliberately worked into the mix, of course). Maybe an optional "backdoor" item for, say, freezing the balls for 1 second. Or, if you're into masochism, navigate a maze whilst avoiding the bouncing things. With pit traps that send you a few screens back. Muahahaha...
Ahem. Back to the review, this is an OK dmod, I guess. This isn't a real adventure or anything, just (ab)using the dink engine to do curious things. That gives it a score of 7.0 in my books. If the author had gone all-out and did some of those things I suggested (and perhaps much more), this would've earned a much higher score in the non-adventure DMOD category.