The Dink Network

The town of Beral is affected by evil across generations.

Finally I get around to playing this DMOD to the end. It is the best non-Dink DMOD I've played to date. Concentrating heavily on a story which is told in vignettes, and generally very well done.

Good:
Very clever use of palette changing for the seasons. And nice modified graphics. Considering the file limit imposed on the competition the author has done very well here. 10 out of 10.

Map:
The map is functional, but not terribly exciting. And I could go behind the black hole as a fairy which kinda broke the suspension of disbelief for me. The occassional behind a door due to depth dot stuff is usual for a DMOD, but behind a hole should not have to happen. Small point I know...
8.0 out of 10. The changing map with seasons was good, but I have categorised that as a graphics enhancement.

Story:
Very interestingly done, having a story span years, and being told in vignettes is great. Story itself... after all is said and done, it wasn't that heroic as such... and this was meant to be an alternate hero dmod. Overall it is better as an alternate character based saga. In light of the evil hero dmod, this dmod could even fit that theme.
9 out of 10.

Bugs:
None really, other than minor map stuff. (see above) 9.9 out of 10.

Game Play:
It took me a while to get into the style of game this DMOD imposes on the player. In fact when I first tried to play this DMOD (when version 1.0 was released) I stopped after the farmer talks to Sam, as I got bored. This time I played all the way through... and still got bored. There were a number of fighting boncas which got repetative, go tell all the fairies something... I find doing an action the same time, more than twice without any variation a detraction. Also the changing of locations (fade down, warp, fade up) seemed to be really slow, and without a freeze until the fade_up was complete I'd sometimes walk onto the next screen while still in black which kinda spoiled the story telling process. A couple of sprites I felt should've had scripts attached like the dead Dad and the fence he was blocking. Killing monsters became very easy and no challenge towards the end, which upped the boring factor. Overall 7 out 10.

Recommendation: Give this a go... it is diverting, but don't except any tough fighting, or being able to live the part as a new hero. This is a tale, with the player very much an outside viewer even though you get to move different characters around.

Overall score: 8.8 out of 10