The Dink Network

Silence

The title screen - white text on a black background was all the rage back in 2015 The basic premise. From the COTPATD project.
November 5th, 2016
1.02
Score : 7.0 good
dragon.gif
Herbie
Peasant He/Him Poland
 
At the very beginning I must say that I hope that the author will make an expanded version of this game or a sequel.
As I wrote in the title, this D-Mod has a big potential for further development, I will also point out few possibilities for this below.

It is one of those few D-Mods in which you are playing not only as somebody else than Dink, but also as a female character.

The game itself is showing that the author is already skilled in making d-mods. For me it is a game in a good old traditional style.

The intro/cutscenes

Both intro and the cutscenes run smoothly and are nicely done. There are not only dialogues in them but also some animations. Transitions into and from cutscenes cause no problems for the player, there is no freezing etc.

The plot

As Alfred Hitchcock once said "A good film should start with an earthquake and be followed by rising tension". In this D-Mod the plot starts with a shock because of a cruel tribal(?)-type ritual (go check for yourself for more details) and then... well, maybe there is not so much of a rising tension, but: there is some potential for it and the plot is not getting boring. The game keeps you focused and you want to proceed with it.

Expanding potential

Without spoiling too much I could say that I personally see two possibilities of expanding of the plot: a tricky - but not totally brutal - payback and maybe even some (love) affair in the town?

The map

The author couldn't make the map much bigger because of the contest requirements, but nevertheless the map is really well done. You got a feeling that some serious effort has been put into polishing it. There are no hardness issues, there are no places in which you can accidentally go into the trees, inside the cliff or off the map. Also there are almost no places in which you can get stucked while walking near the rocks or something. I only found a minor bug: it is sometimes inconvenient to go down the road from the cliffs, just before reaching the plains, before the curve, you can actually get stucked a bit.

There is even one small secret on the map.

Expanding potential

In relation to the plot, the first obvious opportunity for further expanding of the map is to remove the rock near the town and open the path to the south. Also the cliffs/mountains generate some opportunities.

The combat/gameplay

As I mentioned before in this D-Mod you are playing as a female character. Creating combat abilities in that case is always limited, because there are no animations of a woman/girl using for example a sword in Dink (maybe one day somebody will create some of them?). I remember a D-Mod in which it was solved by equipping a woman with a bow.

This D-Mod is a bit different, because at the very beginning you don't have any combat skills, so all you can do is to avoid the enemies.
At the later stages (minor Spoiler) you gain a spell and a throwing axe - which is another obvious solution for a female character to fight the enemies.

The gameplay is also smooth, there aren't any moments in which you are confused and have no idea of what to do next. You constantly have a feeling that the action is evolving and you just want to go further and that proves that the author succeeded in making the game amusing.

I noticed an information about one change that has been done in comparison to version 1.01: "Food, failing to load a save, not having a map, hitting a save bot and megapotions all no longer make text". I understand why it was done, but in that case to be consistent: a similar thing should be done in regard to gold collecting. While the player still should know how much gold has been picked it would be good to put the text in brackets for example.

Summarizing:

As I mentioned, the D-Mod was limited because of the contest requirements, but that should not affect the score. The game should be judged in the context of the possible size of the game. In this regard I say that the author got the job well done and deserves a 7 note. If it would be a quest/epic size game and its quality would be the same I would clearly give it a note between 8 and 9 and I hope that the author will threat it as an encouragement.