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267: Bill & Kill 3: The Terrible End Author: Skull Release Date: July 22, 2007
"Time to kill, says Bill!"
REPUTATION NOTE: This DMOD is part of the incredibly select group to have a rating of less than 1.0 (0.2) on The Dink Network.
What is there to say at this point? Well, let me get the obvious step out of the way...
As you already know, the enemies are too hard. It's goblins this time. They don't do much damage, but they do move too fast and have too much HP, and that does the job of making them impossible just as well. The intro plays every time you visit the first screen, which includes loading a save from the savebot there, making that savebot totally pointless. Then again, you do get a new clawsword every time the intro plays. Why not fill your inventory with them? Oh, the intro also has multiple swear words in it. Skull's anti-swearing stance is not reflected in his work so far, that's for sure.
I didn't make it past the first screen. Nobody ever has without cheating, I'm sure. I didn't bother cheating.
Same s***, different DMOD.
I'm mentioned in the news thread. Striker comments, "'Jameil' is his generation's Tim Maurer." Arik replies, "That's a gross injustice against Tim Maurer." That was nice of you, Arik. Redink1 also did a funny thing with the author link.
But it's all just going through the motions at this point, isn't it? Another carbon copy of the same concept. The description says, "Eh, typical Bill & Kill game." Everybody knew the drill. Gone was the spirit of the gleeful middle finger to the Dink community that was "Bill & Kill: *SIGH*." The joke was never funny to anybody but Skull himself, but I don't see how even he could have been enjoying it at this point. A good practical joke requires surprise. At least a few people probably opened the first one expecting... well, something other than what they got. "The Terrible End" surprised nobody. Neither did "The Unknown Boy." They're both unnecessary dilutions of a concept that was, if I'm honest, executed perfectly for what it was the first time.
So let's forget about "Bill & Kill 3" and go back to the first one. You know, nothing negative I say can hurt these DMODs. They were never supposed to be anything but bad. How could I possibly spite something made for spite?
I have found a way. Very much in the spirit of "Bill & Kill," I have decided to do something stupid.
I am going to attempt to become the first person ever to legitimately clear "Bill & Kill 1: *SIGH*." In the author's initial lie, a crucial part of the prank he played upon Dinkdom, he claimed that he beat it after 543 tries (if he remembers right). That is how many tries I am going to allow myself. Let's see if it can be done.
I feel like something should be riding on the attempt, so how about this: if I don't manage to beat "Bill & Kill 1," I will not go back and cheat to see the ending of "Bill & Kill 3." And I don't just mean for this writeup. I swear to you that, if this attempt is not successful, I will go to my grave not knowing how the "Bill & Kill" series ends. That bit of unfinished business will make me a spooky ghost for sure.
You don't think I'm serious? I'm dead serious. Let's go.
I'm going see you a lot, Mr. Death. How appropriate.
Attempt 1: The only valid strategy is to walk in circles around the knights until they kill each other. The last knight is the hard part. I failed to beat the first screen on this attempt.
My first death.
Attempt 2: I'm not going write about EVERY attempt. But this one went even worse: no knights died. One hit is enough to kill Dink, y'know.
Attempt 3: I did better this time. I made it past the first AND the second screen - a new record for me. Sadly, I died against the final knight on screen 3. Incidentally, this means I'm doing much better than "Jameil," who claimed it took him 19 tries to get past screen 2.
Attempt 5: Son of a bitch! I died on screen 7. This is the last one before the first save point. Still, I have to admit that this is going better than I'd thought it would.
Attempt 6: Died on the first screen again. I've been playing for exactly half an hour at this death. I usually listen to the game when I play Dink, but I'm listening to my music collection to avoid potentially fatal boredom.
Attempt 7: Died on screen 4. It hurts, y'know. It hurts when it happens. Incidentally, I've been putting level up points into Attack, but I don't think it makes any difference. No attack or defense points I get will do me any good.
Attempt 10: I'm getting worse. Three attempts in a row have ended on the first screen.
Attempt 13: My God, this was such a bad idea.
Attempt 14: Look, the blood formed a tortured mask of mirthless laughter. This game is evil.
Attempt 15: It's so tense when you're trying to fight the straggler at the end of a screen. I've definitely gotten worse at it. Second screen this time. I haven't been past the fourth screen since attempt 5.
Attempt 16: Hahaha, I walked right into the group of knights. That's never happened before.
Attempt 17: Had the last two knights on a screen kill each other for the first time. Funny thing: right before it happened, I was wondering when I'd see that.
Attempt 18: I made it. I beat screen 7 (I'm only counting screens that have knights on them, by the way) and made it to the FIRST SAVEBOT. Take THAT, fake Jameil who took 19 tries just to get past the second screen. It does a weird thing where it makes you wait several seconds, but it works. I get to see my ingame time: 17 minutes. That's just for THIS attempt. It's been almost an hour and a half total.
You damn tease.
My approach has gotten really cautious. I keep my distance. Sometimes a whole minute will pass between scoring actual hits on a straggler.
Now comes... can't believe I'm saying this... the hard part. There are a lot more knights on the remaining screens. It could be difficult to avoid them long enough to get into my routine. Worse, there are 11 more screens of them before the second savebot. There are 15 more screens of them total.
I decided to try something different. There are hardness errors to exploit, and that's not cheating. Skull directly advised somebody to use this method to beat his awful DMOD "Fall of Darkness" (due to a release date mixup, I've already written up - and trashed - that one). It's fair game.
Life on the edge!
It didn't go well. Attempt 18 ended on the 8th screen of knights. Hmm. Should I keep trying to exploit hardness, or try to tough it out normally?
Attempt 19: Damn it.
Attempt 20: Well, this is a disaster. All this method does is trap me in range of the knights' attacks. So much for my cunning plan.
Attempt 22: Staying on the outside edge of the screen is a little better, but still dangerous. Nope, I'm going to have to try and do this the regular way.
Attempt 23: A new record: I made it to screen 9 of 22, but died immediately. Welp.
Attempt 25: I had a fantasy in which the knights were set not to regenerate, so I could work through this one screen at a time. Of course they're set to the standard five minutes. I hate this DMOD.
Attempt 26: Shortest attempt yet. I died in roughly five seconds.
Attempt 28: Made it to screen 10. Wheee.
Attempt 30: You know what I really hate? I hate the way that a knight will occasionally break away from the group. I have to try and corral them back in to avoid the straggler at the end having lots of HP left. This problem gets worse as the screens have more and more knights.
Attempt 32: Here's a way I've been saving myself a little work: Every time I beat the knights on screen 8, I go back and save. This buys me a couple of attempts with an empty screen 8.
Attempt 36: I just realized that this has a side effect: I'm accumulating experience. What fun. I wonder how high my level will get? Too bad the knights have 80 defense and 70 attack, so no amount of points to attack or defense will help.
Attempt 38: I'm learning things about Dink Smallwood. The Knights have more defense than attack, so they should never be able to do more than 1 damage to each other, but I've seen numbers as high as 8. It turns out that if a sprite gets hit by multiple things at once, the engine adds them together in the number it displays.
Attempt 39: I made it to screen 11 of 22 for the first time, died immediately. That's halfway through the DMOD, but ages from the second savebot that comes after screen 18. I've been doing this for about two and a half hours.
Attempt 40: Reached level 4. I put my point in defense. It doesn't help, but it makes me feel better.
Attempt 45: the carnage becomes a Rorschach test. What do you see?
Attempt 50: Worried about getting a blister on my thumb, I switched to the keyboard, but I think I'm worse at the game this way.
Attempt 51: I survived a hit from a knight on this run. After getting fatally hit in Dink Smallwood, if you manage to restore your health before the bar moves all the way down, you'll be okay. This can be used with already-equipped elixirs to badly sequence break certain DMODs. Here, I was able to grab a small heart in the very short time before dying. Come to think of it, the only benefit of leveling up in this DMOD is that you get slightly more time to try to pull this off.
Ha HA!
Still died on screen 9. Welp.
Attempt 66: Hi again.
I died on this attempt on screen 11, after a bitter struggle with the last knight on that screen. I did ten damage to him, but he still didn't die. The damn knights only have 30 hit points in the first place. Ugh.
It's been three and a half hours; I'm going to take a break. You know what, I'll just post these as I go along. Maybe you can make bets on whether I'll make it, what's the furthest screen I'll make it to, or whether I'll give up.
[Edit: I had that attempt recorded as 61. It was actually attempt number 66.]
"Time to kill, says Bill!"
REPUTATION NOTE: This DMOD is part of the incredibly select group to have a rating of less than 1.0 (0.2) on The Dink Network.
What is there to say at this point? Well, let me get the obvious step out of the way...
***This DMOD, "Bill & Kill 3: The Terrible End,"*** ********Has been awarded the prestigious********* ****DINK FOREVER MEMORIAL AWARD OF BADNESS***** ********On this day December 10, 2014********
As you already know, the enemies are too hard. It's goblins this time. They don't do much damage, but they do move too fast and have too much HP, and that does the job of making them impossible just as well. The intro plays every time you visit the first screen, which includes loading a save from the savebot there, making that savebot totally pointless. Then again, you do get a new clawsword every time the intro plays. Why not fill your inventory with them? Oh, the intro also has multiple swear words in it. Skull's anti-swearing stance is not reflected in his work so far, that's for sure.
I didn't make it past the first screen. Nobody ever has without cheating, I'm sure. I didn't bother cheating.
Same s***, different DMOD.
I'm mentioned in the news thread. Striker comments, "'Jameil' is his generation's Tim Maurer." Arik replies, "That's a gross injustice against Tim Maurer." That was nice of you, Arik. Redink1 also did a funny thing with the author link.
But it's all just going through the motions at this point, isn't it? Another carbon copy of the same concept. The description says, "Eh, typical Bill & Kill game." Everybody knew the drill. Gone was the spirit of the gleeful middle finger to the Dink community that was "Bill & Kill: *SIGH*." The joke was never funny to anybody but Skull himself, but I don't see how even he could have been enjoying it at this point. A good practical joke requires surprise. At least a few people probably opened the first one expecting... well, something other than what they got. "The Terrible End" surprised nobody. Neither did "The Unknown Boy." They're both unnecessary dilutions of a concept that was, if I'm honest, executed perfectly for what it was the first time.
So let's forget about "Bill & Kill 3" and go back to the first one. You know, nothing negative I say can hurt these DMODs. They were never supposed to be anything but bad. How could I possibly spite something made for spite?
I have found a way. Very much in the spirit of "Bill & Kill," I have decided to do something stupid.
I am going to attempt to become the first person ever to legitimately clear "Bill & Kill 1: *SIGH*." In the author's initial lie, a crucial part of the prank he played upon Dinkdom, he claimed that he beat it after 543 tries (if he remembers right). That is how many tries I am going to allow myself. Let's see if it can be done.
I feel like something should be riding on the attempt, so how about this: if I don't manage to beat "Bill & Kill 1," I will not go back and cheat to see the ending of "Bill & Kill 3." And I don't just mean for this writeup. I swear to you that, if this attempt is not successful, I will go to my grave not knowing how the "Bill & Kill" series ends. That bit of unfinished business will make me a spooky ghost for sure.
You don't think I'm serious? I'm dead serious. Let's go.
I'm going see you a lot, Mr. Death. How appropriate.
Attempt 1: The only valid strategy is to walk in circles around the knights until they kill each other. The last knight is the hard part. I failed to beat the first screen on this attempt.
My first death.
Attempt 2: I'm not going write about EVERY attempt. But this one went even worse: no knights died. One hit is enough to kill Dink, y'know.
Attempt 3: I did better this time. I made it past the first AND the second screen - a new record for me. Sadly, I died against the final knight on screen 3. Incidentally, this means I'm doing much better than "Jameil," who claimed it took him 19 tries to get past screen 2.
Attempt 5: Son of a bitch! I died on screen 7. This is the last one before the first save point. Still, I have to admit that this is going better than I'd thought it would.
Attempt 6: Died on the first screen again. I've been playing for exactly half an hour at this death. I usually listen to the game when I play Dink, but I'm listening to my music collection to avoid potentially fatal boredom.
Attempt 7: Died on screen 4. It hurts, y'know. It hurts when it happens. Incidentally, I've been putting level up points into Attack, but I don't think it makes any difference. No attack or defense points I get will do me any good.
Attempt 10: I'm getting worse. Three attempts in a row have ended on the first screen.
Attempt 13: My God, this was such a bad idea.
Attempt 14: Look, the blood formed a tortured mask of mirthless laughter. This game is evil.
Attempt 15: It's so tense when you're trying to fight the straggler at the end of a screen. I've definitely gotten worse at it. Second screen this time. I haven't been past the fourth screen since attempt 5.
Attempt 16: Hahaha, I walked right into the group of knights. That's never happened before.
Attempt 17: Had the last two knights on a screen kill each other for the first time. Funny thing: right before it happened, I was wondering when I'd see that.
Attempt 18: I made it. I beat screen 7 (I'm only counting screens that have knights on them, by the way) and made it to the FIRST SAVEBOT. Take THAT, fake Jameil who took 19 tries just to get past the second screen. It does a weird thing where it makes you wait several seconds, but it works. I get to see my ingame time: 17 minutes. That's just for THIS attempt. It's been almost an hour and a half total.
You damn tease.
My approach has gotten really cautious. I keep my distance. Sometimes a whole minute will pass between scoring actual hits on a straggler.
Now comes... can't believe I'm saying this... the hard part. There are a lot more knights on the remaining screens. It could be difficult to avoid them long enough to get into my routine. Worse, there are 11 more screens of them before the second savebot. There are 15 more screens of them total.
I decided to try something different. There are hardness errors to exploit, and that's not cheating. Skull directly advised somebody to use this method to beat his awful DMOD "Fall of Darkness" (due to a release date mixup, I've already written up - and trashed - that one). It's fair game.
Life on the edge!
It didn't go well. Attempt 18 ended on the 8th screen of knights. Hmm. Should I keep trying to exploit hardness, or try to tough it out normally?
Attempt 19: Damn it.
Attempt 20: Well, this is a disaster. All this method does is trap me in range of the knights' attacks. So much for my cunning plan.
Attempt 22: Staying on the outside edge of the screen is a little better, but still dangerous. Nope, I'm going to have to try and do this the regular way.
Attempt 23: A new record: I made it to screen 9 of 22, but died immediately. Welp.
Attempt 25: I had a fantasy in which the knights were set not to regenerate, so I could work through this one screen at a time. Of course they're set to the standard five minutes. I hate this DMOD.
Attempt 26: Shortest attempt yet. I died in roughly five seconds.
Attempt 28: Made it to screen 10. Wheee.
Attempt 30: You know what I really hate? I hate the way that a knight will occasionally break away from the group. I have to try and corral them back in to avoid the straggler at the end having lots of HP left. This problem gets worse as the screens have more and more knights.
Attempt 32: Here's a way I've been saving myself a little work: Every time I beat the knights on screen 8, I go back and save. This buys me a couple of attempts with an empty screen 8.
Attempt 36: I just realized that this has a side effect: I'm accumulating experience. What fun. I wonder how high my level will get? Too bad the knights have 80 defense and 70 attack, so no amount of points to attack or defense will help.
Attempt 38: I'm learning things about Dink Smallwood. The Knights have more defense than attack, so they should never be able to do more than 1 damage to each other, but I've seen numbers as high as 8. It turns out that if a sprite gets hit by multiple things at once, the engine adds them together in the number it displays.
Attempt 39: I made it to screen 11 of 22 for the first time, died immediately. That's halfway through the DMOD, but ages from the second savebot that comes after screen 18. I've been doing this for about two and a half hours.
Attempt 40: Reached level 4. I put my point in defense. It doesn't help, but it makes me feel better.
Attempt 45: the carnage becomes a Rorschach test. What do you see?
Attempt 50: Worried about getting a blister on my thumb, I switched to the keyboard, but I think I'm worse at the game this way.
Attempt 51: I survived a hit from a knight on this run. After getting fatally hit in Dink Smallwood, if you manage to restore your health before the bar moves all the way down, you'll be okay. This can be used with already-equipped elixirs to badly sequence break certain DMODs. Here, I was able to grab a small heart in the very short time before dying. Come to think of it, the only benefit of leveling up in this DMOD is that you get slightly more time to try to pull this off.
Ha HA!
Still died on screen 9. Welp.
Attempt 66: Hi again.
I died on this attempt on screen 11, after a bitter struggle with the last knight on that screen. I did ten damage to him, but he still didn't die. The damn knights only have 30 hit points in the first place. Ugh.
It's been three and a half hours; I'm going to take a break. You know what, I'll just post these as I go along. Maybe you can make bets on whether I'll make it, what's the furthest screen I'll make it to, or whether I'll give up.
[Edit: I had that attempt recorded as 61. It was actually attempt number 66.]
