The Dink Network

I'm called Tim. I've been playing Dink since it came out, when I was a young, dumb kid.

timthreethreethree@gmail.com
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196: Castle Killers Author: GameHampe Release Date: July 11, 2004
"Dink! My castle is gone!"
"What?"
"Yup. Some evil wizard teleported it to the island to the east of here."

"Castle Killers" is actually about the theft, not murder, of a castle, as Dink (or theguywhosavedusfromseth, which the intro claims he changed his name to) finds out during a bizarre little conversation with the King.


Standards of what constitutes a "castle" seem to have fallen considerably.

But I didn't even know that on my first playthrough. This is because there's a well near the start of the game which, when examined, goes ahead and throws you forward to the segment you're supposed to reach after talking to the King and receiving what little exposition this DMOD is willing to deliver. This also makes the game slightly harder, as by skipping that segment, you're also missing out on several of the many megapotions that are scattered around the map.

This one is laid out over several huge, uninteresting maps, though it isn't by any means a long DMOD. There are plenty of pillbugs and boncas around, but no good reason to fight them (while watching me ignore screen after screen of pillbugs, my wife inquired, "gameplay?"). There are a couple of bosses, but they're both touch damagers who don't present much of a threat. Screen decoration consists mainly of badly stamping the same tree in poorly-considered clumps. Tiling is a nightmare.


Yeah, just use that one tile over and over, I'm sure that's fine.

For some reason, there is a winter-themed segment where you encounter a hovel you're told belongs to Santa Claus (it looks pretty shabby - I would think Santa could afford better). Crawling into his fireplace leads to a tunnel that comes out in... Stonebrook. From the original game. Huh?


Well, those are memorable last words, I'll give you that.

Once you get to Stonebrook, it certainly seems that you're stuck. It was only thanks to an old forum post I found that I discovered that you have to examine a perfectly ordinary-looking rock behind Ethel's house in order to continue. Of all the confusing bits of design that require you to read the author's mind in order to progress I've encountered in DMODs, I think this one might be the worst so far.

Anyway, it turns out that it was no evil wizard responsible for stealing the castle - it was Ethel. Would she really do such a thing?


Actually, after playing "Quest for the Golden Nut" I'd believe she's capable of anything.

After Dink defeats Ethel, he returns to the King. If you talk to him, he says, "Hooray Dink! You saved me!!" That's it as far as an ending goes. You can't leave the room, and the game leaves it to you to quit. I think the fact that the script for displaying this one line is named "ending.c" is the funniest part of the DMOD.

"Castle Killers" left me confused and with a headache. Immediately after playing, I took two aspirin. It is tragically easy to confuse me.

197: Matoya Author: Astral Release Date: July 11, 2004
"But Because Dink dont know how to read, he dont Remember what to do..."

"Matoya" insists on portraying Dink Smallwood as illiterate even though this directly contradicts what we see in the original game. It doesn't matter that much - it's just weird, is all. Sometimes I wonder whether some authors really played the original game or paid much attention when they did.

The title is the name of a land where Dink finds himself. His goal is to kill a slayer named the Astral Being, but before he can get there, he has to clear out a major nest of pillbugs and slimes. There isn't a lot of story here, but there are a few colorful bit characters.


The dancing gnome is pretty funny. It's his enthusiasm that gets me.

The extremely cheerful music in this DMOD belies its difficulty. "Matoya" was the first time I did serious level grinding in a DMOD in quite a while; there's just no other way to compete with the bosses. The bosses are a tiny pillbug, a big slime and a fast slayer, and they're all more difficult than you expect them to be. I managed to punch the pillbug to death after a few tries, but I found it necessary to raise 2000 gold and buy the claw sword in order to beat the slime. By the time you get to the end boss, you'll have the throwing axe, but the slayer is so fast that the only way I could win was by leveling up for more defense. Although this is really quite a short DMOD, I got to level 10! This didn't take as long as you might think thanks to a machine that lets you trade gold for experience points, a concept the author credits to "The Quest for Cheese."


A tiny pillbug as a boss is an unusual choice. Also, those brambles are just a harmless backdrop.


Um... "not?"

Incidentally, this mod has the highest portion of unused screens that I've seen. Take a look at the map:


I've drawn a blue box around the screens that actually appear in the DMOD.

The author was probably planning a larger DMOD. I respect them for being realistic and scaling it down instead of declaring this a "demo" that would never be finished.

198: Slimes VS Dink Author: TA Release Date: July 11, 2004
"Now move your butt in the Slimefarm!"

That's right, three DMODs were released on the same day. As far as I can tell, the only other time this happened outside of a contest was back in 1998, on that fateful day in August when I released "Dink Smallwood Forever." "Dinkzilla" and "Legend of Smallwood" came out the same day.

TA is the author of "Hide-and-seek." If anything, his second effort is worse than his first.

************This DMOD, "Slimes VS Dink,"***********
 ********Has been awarded the prestigious*********
  ****DINK FOREVER MEMORIAL AWARD OF BADNESS*****
   ********On this day September 23, 2014*******

The best thing I can say about TA's DMODs is that they aren't buggy. Instead, they are just completely devoid of interest. Even terrible mods like "Dink Forever" and "Ghosts of the Cast" have a quirk or two that the easily amused might appreciate, but I can't think of a single reason to play this or "Hide-and-seek."

I mean, unless you want to punch a lot of slimes. Then I guess this DMOD has you covered.


This. Lots and lots of this.

On the first screen, a comically big knight orders Dink to kill slimes. What follows is sixteen locked screens in a row full of slimes. There are no weapons. The slime-punching is set to a MIDI of the Bonanza theme, and after a while the contrast between the theme's promise of adventure and the tedium of my task made for some unintentional comedy. The final screen contains a bigger slime with 200 hit points. When you beat it, some text says, "MISSION COMPLETE!" There are supposed to be a couple more lines, and the game is supposed to end on its own, but due to the problem with using say_stop in die procedures, this doesn't happen.

You know, this really was an exceptionally pointless mission. The slimes were contained within an otherwise empty fenced area. They weren't hurting anybody. They weren't threatening some village or something. Hell, the knight at the start even refers to the area as "the Slimefarm," suggesting that somebody cultivated these slimes on purpose. Isn't Dink just pointlessly destroying somebody else's property? Wow, what a jerk. Screw this DMOD, man.