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Elpo's Profile

2024-08-18 02:17:18
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Elpo
Peasant He/Him Finland
 
When this development jam was announced, I contacted Seseler, because I knew he had recently replayed the original Dink Smallwood, and I thought he would have good ideas. We had a brainstorming session about our entry. We both think Dink Smallwood is quite a good game already. What could we do to improve it, besides fixing the obvious and less obvious bugs and weirdness? We agreed that the biggest flaw of the game is how easy it is for a new player to get stuck, because they don't know what they are supposed to do.

We thought that a quest log, as well as a hint system, would be a good solution to this problem. We had a few different ideas on how the hint system could work, but we decided to implement it as an in-game character giving hints. Martridge seemed perfect for this role: as a wizard, it's fitting for him to have supernatural knowledge of what to do. His remote location was also good, as it would lessen the temptation for the player to always get hints without trying anything themselves.

Besides the quest log and hints, we made list of many other things to add or fix. Some of the things on the list turned out too difficult to implement from the technical standpoint, but otherwise, we managed to do almost everything we planned to do, which I am very happy about. Two things I would have done if the development jam had run longer were actual graphics for invisible Dink as well as more dialogue for talking and punching objects, but I don't think those are big omissions from our D-Mod. My goal was for the D-Mod to be a better gameplay experience than the original game, and I think we succeeded.

Later in the development jam Seseler pointed out that maybe an entry focused on making the game better for new players isn't the best idea for a competition where people voting on the entries are Dink veterans.

In our initial brainstorming session, we thought about making the lands east of Windemere accessible and adding some stuff there. It was funny to see that both Hack n' Slash and Expanded Dink actually did so. Also, both Quest Log and Hack n' Slash modified the cutscene where Dink eavesdrops the Cast knights when first going to Kernsin so that Dink actually hides from them. I guess great minds think alike .

Elpo has released 1 file

TitleCategoryAvgUpdated
Dink Smallwood Questlog EditionD-Mod, Add-OnN/ASeptember 1st, 2024

Elpo has written 1 review

TitleFileTypeScoreDate
This D-Mod changes far more than the you'd guess from the title. Hack n' SlashFeaturedGood 8.1August 3rd, 2024

Elpo has taken 4 screenshots

ScreenshotFileDate
Preview Dink Smallwood Questlog EditionSeptember 22nd, 2024
Preview Dink Smallwood Questlog EditionSeptember 22nd, 2024
Preview Dink Smallwood Questlog EditionSeptember 22nd, 2024
Preview Dink Smallwood Questlog EditionSeptember 22nd, 2024