The Dink Network

Dink Goes Hunting

Description
King Daniel is out of money because of the lower taxes Dink asked for. Dink is sent to a rich kingdom to fix things.

But when he speaks to the king there it seems that there is more going on than Dink could possibly imagine.

Dink v1.08 Aural+ is recommended.
Released:February 18th, 2007
File Size:3.70 MB
Downloads:570
Release Notes:Just an update with fixes of spelling, grammar, flaws and bugs.
Play:Play this D-Mod right now in your web browser! (More Info)
 
August 13th, 2009
v1.02
Score : 6.5 fair
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My first impression of this game was that it's an okay, slightly amateurish quest. Well, my second impression, after I had to quit and relaunch the dmod in truecolour mode because it looked like crap in 256 colours. Why a module with only original Dink / modified original Dink graphics forces you to use truecolour mode? There is no justification.

The story is very silly. In the original adventure, Dink could ask King Daniel to lower the taxes. Apparently, the King took Dink's advise, and now he's too poor to even maintain his castle, so he sends Dink to a wealthy kingdom to collect 100.000 gold pieces. Passable for a comedy, horrible premise for a mostly serious quest. There is a twist, however... The King is too smart to do something that stupid, so clearly some evil mastermind is behind his poor financial decisions. Okay. The story really isn't the strong point of this demo.

The game starts out extremely boring. The dialogue and NPC interactions are almost as interesting and funny as staring at dust gathering on your keyboard. 5 minutes into the game, I was ready to quit, but a single entertaining event involving some pigs gave me energy to continue. shootty story and boring as hell, the dmod really doesn't promise much at this point. You need 200 gold pieces to go to the next area, but I could not gather that much despite killing every monster around and looking for secrets on all screens. Am I supposed to wait until the enemies respawn before I can gather enough gold? Yeah, not going to happen. *cheatcheatcheat*

After you reach the second village, there's more to do, and while the dialogue is stiff throughout the whole demo, occassionally something funny happens, so you don't completely lose the desire to interact with things. If not the underlying story, the way it's carried out also improves. The point where the game ends actually left me looking forward to what would happen next. What I did not like was how you need to run back to the King every 5 minutes so he can tell you what to do next. Is Dink some kind of drone with no mind of his own? "I found a hole! I need to report this to the King!"

The music mostly sucks. Either it doesn't fit or it's just lifted from another dmod and used in the exact same situation as in the game/dmod it's taken from. This doesn't really change as the game progresses, but there are a few midis that are good enough to make it forgivable. A nice surprise was that there is also a single .mp3 song included. The mp3 is RAWSOME.

The gameplay is pretty good. You can buy several weapons and magic, the enemies aren't too difficult or easy (until the last part where they start giving money and experience very generously- but it's the end of the demo, so it doesn't matter). There are some pretty neat secrets, the map looks nice, is decorated better than many other dmods, and the graphics from original Dink are used cleverly. It LOOKS good, but a lot of stuff like grass and bonca crap is hittable (spells won't fly over it), there are some annoying hardness errors and too often barrels/boxes/chests are unbreakable. The original game already has too few things to break, taking even more away is just evil! Also, the dmod doesn't have ducks. WTF?

There are some new (seemingly Morrowind-inspired) features. You can use a mortar & pestle and ingredients to make stuff. One NPC can increase your attributes for money. You can drink temporarily stat-altering alcohol in the pub. I didn't find these features particularly fun or needed, though they might be cool on a longer adventure.

There is also a casino, where you can play blackjack or use a "money slurping machine". The blackjack was pretty cool, with a neat GUI. The machine wasn't so much fun, but since I won 100 000 gold on the first try, I couldn't possibly call it boring. Hey, doesn't that mean I should be heading back to poor dim-witted King Daniel already? I won!! I won!!

My last impression of this game was that it kept getting better. If a full version was coming, I would be looking forward to it, since I know it would keep getting better still. The demo isn't anywhere near as good as some of the other reviews made me expect, though.
TopicPostsPosterLast Post
explosive11aiciFebruary 6th 2008, 05:20 AM
Forest18Jonas0075November 4th 2007, 07:00 AM
Help2dominikzgOctober 26th 2007, 03:54 PM
End2skullApril 17th 2007, 10:37 AM
can't get to the Machine3nenajaJanuary 23rd 2007, 05:37 PM
i am stuck4lo2lo2a82December 6th 2006, 07:16 AM