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September 9th 2014, 04:49 AM
custom_coco.gif
CocoMonkey
Bard He/Him United States
Please Cindy, say the whole name each time. 
While writing #164, I realized that these little writeups should really link to the downloads in case a reader would like to try a certain DMOD for themselves. Therefore, I went back and added links to the whole project.

165: The Rivals Authors: ThinkDink, DareDink Release Date: July 22, 2003
"What Ever N00b"

"DareDink" is ThinkDink's brother. According to TD, his brother had absolutely no knowledge of DinkC scripting prior to working on this DMOD.

This is a definite improvement over ThinkDink's "Ghosts of the Cast" series. That's more of a statement of how bad GotC was than anything else, though. This is still the pits.

*************This DMOD, "The Rivals,"**************
 ********Has been awarded the prestigious*********
  ****DINK FOREVER MEMORIAL AWARD OF BADNESS*****
   *********On this day September 9, 2014*******


Judging from this DMOD's absurd 6.7 average, which would still be 6.2 even without the typical inflation by ThinkDink (who had the unmitigated gall to give it an 8.8), many seek to reward obvious improvement with overpraise in the hopes of encouraging further improvement. Not me, though. I am a bad man without mercy, and this DMOD is still lame. Even if you disagree this deserves the DFMAOB, you have to admit that score is utterly pineapples. I mean, End of the World is definitely better than this one, and there's no way EOTW deserves anywhere near a 6.


Dink is to peace as nature is to a vacuum.

ThinkDink had learned a bit since his earlier mods, which never really did anything at all. The GotC mods rely on telling you things are happening and counting on you to pretend they really are. This one at least has some vendors who sell you things and a boss with screen lock at the end. I guess that's a step in the right direction, considering that this actually came out just a couple of weeks after the original "Ghosts of the Cast."

"Rivals" starts you off with no items at all, not even the fist. Just north of the start, you can find several people who will sell you items and magic. The fists are free. Enough money to pay for everything else can be found one screen further north. Here, for the first and only time, ThinkDink finally attempted to check to see whether the player had already done something - too bad it goes all wrong. When you talk to a vendor to buy an item, each vendor's script checks whether you have the herb boots for some reason. The herb boots are a free gift with your purchase of the throwing axe, so you can't get either of those twice. But you can get multiple copies of anything else on sale provided you get it before the axe and boots, and once you've gotten those, you can't get anything else at all.


I always wondered why Dink never has two.

The map also shows slight improvement, but it's still quite boring with loads of copied and pasted screens. There are some burning houses that look OK, but houses are still strictly decoration with little to no hardness and certainly can't be entered. By now, it's clear what sort of design ThinkDink likes - a very long, thin path - a big loop in this case - with the same enemies over and over that you're not required to fight. All of his mods follow this basic pattern. Even if you did feel like stopping to fight the enemies, your axe and boots would make short work of them.


A couple of screens are lined with hedges that have the bonca script attached to them, so they all turn into boncas. It's a confusing sight.

The story is awfully thin; it's better developed in the description than it is in the mod. All that really matters is that an evil wizard named Darknoth has laid waste to a village and you've got to go kick his magical ass. If there were any "rivals" around, I didn't notice them.


Darknoth thinks he's a big deal, but Dink has seen this sort of thing several times in ThinkDink's DMODs alone.

Darknoth isn't hard to beat even if you never got any magic or fought any of the enemies on the way. You do have to fight him - what a change of pace that is! - but the screen unlocking is the only thing that happens when he dies. This means that if you leave and return, he'll be there again as many times as you'd like to fight him.

This might have been a first step toward eventual competence if ThinkDink had kept going, but this is his last DMOD. Oh, well. I can relate. The "Ghosts" trilogy and its followup closely mirrors my own Dink Forever trilogy and 2001: A Dink Odyssey in several ways, and I'll bet ThinkDink was a lot like me: too eager to get his work out there to take the time to learn how to do anything correctly.