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330: Power of Blood Author: JugglingDink Release Date: April 13, 2011
"This is the fabled power of the BloodBirds..."
REPUTATION NOTE: This D-Mod is one of the select group with a score of 9.0 or better (9.5) on The Dink Network.
9.5 doesn't mean what it used to; there's just one review. Pillbug sure liked it, though.
Remember "Dinkzilla?" Imagine you could be Dinkzilla, but you had to earn it first. That's the gist of "Power of Blood." It's a very easy D-Mod, but cool nonetheless. It came in second in the contest, but there was also a general forum vote on which of the entries was best, and "Power of Blood" won that.
There are no experience points and no stat potions in this D-Mod. Excluding these elements was smart, since they would have absolutely no bearing on the game anyway. Dink starts with very good stats and ends up with stupidly great stats.
Dink, tired of the constant attention he gets in his homeland as heroic savior of the world, goes on vacation. For some reason, he brings Mr. SmileStein with him. I didn't think they were that close. Does... Dink have any friends? Wow, I'm sad now.
The town you start in is full of NPCs that only have a small set of lines to say, but if you enter the houses there are people to talk to, and just about every object has a unique script. It gets to the point where I think Juggs is just showing off how many lines he can write about inanimate objects. There's a stairway leading down in the middle of town that takes you to a room with twelve beds in it - and each of them has a different script! There's no real point to this area - it's just there so that the author could make Dink say more things while examining and hitting beds. Some of it inevitably gets pretty strange.
Well, not literally, anyway.
As always, Dink's vacation doesn't turn out to be very relaxing. The morning after he arrives, a bunch of knights claiming to be the Cast show up and kill everybody except Dink, SmileStein and the mayor, an old guy named Doug. The knights can't be defeated by conventional means because they aren't really members of the Cast or even real humans, for that matter. They're actually conjured by a powerful wizard. Today's evil wizard du jour goes by Alverk and has a slightly different motivation than the usual: he's come to kill Dink because he killed Seth before the wizard got the chance. HE wanted the glory... to use it as a launching point for ruling the world. I guess his motive isn't so different after all. You can see his dream come true if you ignore the instructions you're given by SmileStein to go to the mayor's house and end up going straight to the Alverk's hideout instead.
I don't see what the point of the cage is. He never moves anyway.
As the three survivors hide out, Doug explains that he knows of a temple where Dink can acquire an unstoppable power that once belonged to a trio known as the "BloodBirds." He sends Dink to the temple. Other than that, Doug and SmileStein are no help. They're world-class idiots anyway. SmileStein says "hit me" during a game of poker, and Dougie claims that STDs "don't exist yet." I bet he's got the clap.
In the temple, you have to complete three challenges in order to collect three vials of blood that once belonged to the BloodBirds. You have to mix 'em all together in a fountain in order to be infused with bloody power. There are some interesting ideas in the challenges here. In one of the areas, Dink is given jumping boots and must leap from one piece of land to another while dodging obstacles. The delay on the jumping animation makes the timing slightly tricky. I also like the look of the jumping challenge area. In another challenge, you have to get points in a time limit by killing enemies. The pillbugs give you one point each, and the spikeys take away five points. However, your health is constantly draining, and you can only refill it by killing the spikeys. It's a clever little challenge, and it took me two tries. That was the only time I died while playing this D-Mod.
Check out that vertical! Dink has got some hops.
Upon completing the blood trials, Dink turns red and gains absurd stats (250 to all), a spell that shoots hellfire off in four directions, and other unspecified abilities, including the apparent ability to teleport by yelling really loud and then exploding. Now he can go confront Alverk. The end battle isn't hard, but it is interesting. There are several phases, each set in a different arena. The boss has a few different attacks for each phase. Fire rains from the sky and erupts from the ground. He'll turn invisible or make clones of himself. He makes clones of Dink as well as more of the fake Cast knights. Dink loses a big chunk of his crazy stats at the end of each phase. Again, it isn't difficult, but it does stay interesting thanks to all the variety.
Phase 1 takes place in a colorful dimension of some kind.
Alverk summons purple fireballs and clones of Dink.
A couple of new game modes are unlocked at the title screen after getting the bad and good endings. Scene viewer allows you to watch several of the game's cutscenes whenever you like. The other unlockable mode is called "the slaughter house" (I thought this might be a tribute to the winner of the very first D-Mod contest, but it doesn't seem so). Here, "Power of Blood" really earns its status as a carnage-themed D-Mod. Here, you can slaughter things in various ways. There's a room where you can kill an infinite number of ducks, a room where you can decide what you want to kill by selecting enemies, a setting and your own stats (kind of like "Dink Arena" without the weapon options) and a section where you fight a bunch of objects you wouldn't usually fight, like chimneys and mushrooms. Once you've killed at least 100 things in each of these settings, you can access a room where you click the mouse to drop flaming death on a crowd of people. Good times!
I think the floor could use another coat!
At long last - a duel between the only two playable characters in Dink Smallwood. I'm talking about Dink and the mouse pointer, of course.
What fun we have because RTSoft decided the title screen needed mouse support.
There are little secrets you can find in both the scene viewer and the slaughterhouse - spells you can use in the main game. They aren't a big deal, but they give you something else to do in the alternate game modes, which gives you a reason to check them out.
New Stuff: There are several new recolored graphics and tiles and a couple of new or new-ish spells.
Carnage rating: 5 out of 5 DDCs. Although a lot of people die in the main game, most of the killing happens off-camera, so even though the quest is very much about blood, the main game isn't bloody enough to get full marks on its own. It's the extra slaughter house mode that really impressed me with the creative ways it lets the player kill things and made this earn all my DDCs.
331: The Blacksmith's Trail Author: Marpro Release Date: April 13, 2011
"Don't you like the smell of burnt corpses and chaos in the morning?"
REPUTATION NOTE: This D-Mod is one of the select group with a score of 9.0 or better (9.5) on The Dink Network.
Again, there's just one review, but pillbug sure liked it.
I don't often feature title screens, but that is nice.
"The Blacksmith's Trail" is the winner of the contest. Although it faces some pretty good competition from "Power of Blood," it's my favorite D-Mod of the contest. Heck, it's also my favorite D-Mod by Marpro. It's so well put together that I couldn't identify a single problem with it - well, okay, at one point you are required to interact with things you have no real reason to suspect aren't decoration in order to progress, and I did get stuck there, but that's the only thing I can think of. The story is excellently paced with events that catch your interest and move the plot along nicely. The decoration is beautiful and helps set a strong tone of corruption, ruin and chaos.
Just look at the way this screen is composed! Look how the shadows frame the house. This is the first screen. Right away you know you're in for a good time.
An evil wizard (I feel like I am starting to wear out the phrase "evil wizard") named Odium Interitus has turned the blacksmith in the town of Foulstone into a beast who makes everyone around him insane. The people of the town have become mindless killers, like zombies without actually being undead. Dink and the wizard Martridge must follow the blacksmith's trail (good title synergy) of destruction, confront Odium and put a stop to the blacksmith-beast. Along the way, you'll have to deal with the mad townsfolk. Martridge will help you fight, but his spells are weak due to something Odium has done. In the end, any survivors are apparently cured, but I killed them all. The game ranks you on how many you killed - I got called a "butcher" for my trouble. Hey, it's a carnage D-Mod, what can I say? You could try to get the best rank ("Hero") for a little extra challenge.
Dink and Marty battle the mad villagers.
The fights can be pretty challenging, as many of the enemies can move very quickly. I only died once against the boss at the end, but I had a few more close calls. The gameplay felt really well-balanced. Exploring turns up a couple of helpful secrets, including a curious potion that flips between red and blue and increases strength or defense depending on when you pick it up.
You can pick up hints here and there of how things went as things went south in Foulstone. There's an old meeting place with messages posted about the spreading magical "contagion," which end abruptly. You can find the remains of a character who was so afraid he abandoned his children, and when he still couldn't escape, he killed himself rather than get swept up in the madness. It's nice to have these kinds of details rather than just being told that another town has succumbed to come catastrophe.
Despite what you might think from a mention of "contagion," there are no zombies in this D-Mod.
"Blacksmith's Trail" is the best treatment I've seen of Martridge's character. He's presented as Dink's mentor, and their dialogue here makes it a believable relationship. You can talk to him as he follows you around, and one of the things he'll discuss is the time he and Dink first met. He explains his behavior at the time - he needed to prove to Dink that magic was real and "not just some random gibberish from an old man." You don't talk to Martridge a whole awful lot and it's not like there's some deep discussion, but somehow referring back to that silly moment in a more serious context really cemented the relationship between Dink and the ol' wizard for me in a way I'm not sure I've ever felt before. A lot of D-Mods take it as granted, when in the original game they really didn't have that much to do with each other. Remember, Dink never even saw Martridge again after killing the bonca, no matter what you do. I guess it speaks to the isolated nature of the original game when this is the relationship D-Mod authors have consistently latched onto.
Dink has to save his old friend in this D-Mod when Odium traps him in a magical stone. Unfortunately, it turns out to be for nothing. Martridge momentarily forgets that his powers have faded and confronts the blacksmith-creature, getting pounded flat as a pancake. It's presented humorously, but I felt bad for old beardy.
The blacksmith himself is a brand new 3D graphic of a huge, headless dude with hammers for hands. He has a spinning attack as well as pounding his hammer-fists together. You should keep your distance; he packs a punch. There is a little background for the blacksmith character - you meet his daughter - but he seems unable to reason very much when you run into the beast he's become.
The tragic consequences of too much iron in one's diet.
So overall, I was impressed with this one. I think I agree with the contest winner this time.
New stuff: The blacksmith and a few decorations.
Carnage rating: 5 out of 5 DDCs. There's death and destruction everywhere, you can personally kill a huge number of people, and the human cost of the carnage feels much higher than in the other entries. You get more background on the town and have more reason to care about its destruction. I feel like this really deals with the concept of "carnage" more than any other entry in the contest.
"This is the fabled power of the BloodBirds..."
REPUTATION NOTE: This D-Mod is one of the select group with a score of 9.0 or better (9.5) on The Dink Network.
9.5 doesn't mean what it used to; there's just one review. Pillbug sure liked it, though.
Remember "Dinkzilla?" Imagine you could be Dinkzilla, but you had to earn it first. That's the gist of "Power of Blood." It's a very easy D-Mod, but cool nonetheless. It came in second in the contest, but there was also a general forum vote on which of the entries was best, and "Power of Blood" won that.
There are no experience points and no stat potions in this D-Mod. Excluding these elements was smart, since they would have absolutely no bearing on the game anyway. Dink starts with very good stats and ends up with stupidly great stats.
Dink, tired of the constant attention he gets in his homeland as heroic savior of the world, goes on vacation. For some reason, he brings Mr. SmileStein with him. I didn't think they were that close. Does... Dink have any friends? Wow, I'm sad now.
The town you start in is full of NPCs that only have a small set of lines to say, but if you enter the houses there are people to talk to, and just about every object has a unique script. It gets to the point where I think Juggs is just showing off how many lines he can write about inanimate objects. There's a stairway leading down in the middle of town that takes you to a room with twelve beds in it - and each of them has a different script! There's no real point to this area - it's just there so that the author could make Dink say more things while examining and hitting beds. Some of it inevitably gets pretty strange.
Well, not literally, anyway.
As always, Dink's vacation doesn't turn out to be very relaxing. The morning after he arrives, a bunch of knights claiming to be the Cast show up and kill everybody except Dink, SmileStein and the mayor, an old guy named Doug. The knights can't be defeated by conventional means because they aren't really members of the Cast or even real humans, for that matter. They're actually conjured by a powerful wizard. Today's evil wizard du jour goes by Alverk and has a slightly different motivation than the usual: he's come to kill Dink because he killed Seth before the wizard got the chance. HE wanted the glory... to use it as a launching point for ruling the world. I guess his motive isn't so different after all. You can see his dream come true if you ignore the instructions you're given by SmileStein to go to the mayor's house and end up going straight to the Alverk's hideout instead.
I don't see what the point of the cage is. He never moves anyway.
As the three survivors hide out, Doug explains that he knows of a temple where Dink can acquire an unstoppable power that once belonged to a trio known as the "BloodBirds." He sends Dink to the temple. Other than that, Doug and SmileStein are no help. They're world-class idiots anyway. SmileStein says "hit me" during a game of poker, and Dougie claims that STDs "don't exist yet." I bet he's got the clap.
In the temple, you have to complete three challenges in order to collect three vials of blood that once belonged to the BloodBirds. You have to mix 'em all together in a fountain in order to be infused with bloody power. There are some interesting ideas in the challenges here. In one of the areas, Dink is given jumping boots and must leap from one piece of land to another while dodging obstacles. The delay on the jumping animation makes the timing slightly tricky. I also like the look of the jumping challenge area. In another challenge, you have to get points in a time limit by killing enemies. The pillbugs give you one point each, and the spikeys take away five points. However, your health is constantly draining, and you can only refill it by killing the spikeys. It's a clever little challenge, and it took me two tries. That was the only time I died while playing this D-Mod.
Check out that vertical! Dink has got some hops.
Upon completing the blood trials, Dink turns red and gains absurd stats (250 to all), a spell that shoots hellfire off in four directions, and other unspecified abilities, including the apparent ability to teleport by yelling really loud and then exploding. Now he can go confront Alverk. The end battle isn't hard, but it is interesting. There are several phases, each set in a different arena. The boss has a few different attacks for each phase. Fire rains from the sky and erupts from the ground. He'll turn invisible or make clones of himself. He makes clones of Dink as well as more of the fake Cast knights. Dink loses a big chunk of his crazy stats at the end of each phase. Again, it isn't difficult, but it does stay interesting thanks to all the variety.
Phase 1 takes place in a colorful dimension of some kind.
Alverk summons purple fireballs and clones of Dink.
A couple of new game modes are unlocked at the title screen after getting the bad and good endings. Scene viewer allows you to watch several of the game's cutscenes whenever you like. The other unlockable mode is called "the slaughter house" (I thought this might be a tribute to the winner of the very first D-Mod contest, but it doesn't seem so). Here, "Power of Blood" really earns its status as a carnage-themed D-Mod. Here, you can slaughter things in various ways. There's a room where you can kill an infinite number of ducks, a room where you can decide what you want to kill by selecting enemies, a setting and your own stats (kind of like "Dink Arena" without the weapon options) and a section where you fight a bunch of objects you wouldn't usually fight, like chimneys and mushrooms. Once you've killed at least 100 things in each of these settings, you can access a room where you click the mouse to drop flaming death on a crowd of people. Good times!
I think the floor could use another coat!
At long last - a duel between the only two playable characters in Dink Smallwood. I'm talking about Dink and the mouse pointer, of course.
What fun we have because RTSoft decided the title screen needed mouse support.
There are little secrets you can find in both the scene viewer and the slaughterhouse - spells you can use in the main game. They aren't a big deal, but they give you something else to do in the alternate game modes, which gives you a reason to check them out.
New Stuff: There are several new recolored graphics and tiles and a couple of new or new-ish spells.
Carnage rating: 5 out of 5 DDCs. Although a lot of people die in the main game, most of the killing happens off-camera, so even though the quest is very much about blood, the main game isn't bloody enough to get full marks on its own. It's the extra slaughter house mode that really impressed me with the creative ways it lets the player kill things and made this earn all my DDCs.
331: The Blacksmith's Trail Author: Marpro Release Date: April 13, 2011
"Don't you like the smell of burnt corpses and chaos in the morning?"
REPUTATION NOTE: This D-Mod is one of the select group with a score of 9.0 or better (9.5) on The Dink Network.
Again, there's just one review, but pillbug sure liked it.
I don't often feature title screens, but that is nice.
"The Blacksmith's Trail" is the winner of the contest. Although it faces some pretty good competition from "Power of Blood," it's my favorite D-Mod of the contest. Heck, it's also my favorite D-Mod by Marpro. It's so well put together that I couldn't identify a single problem with it - well, okay, at one point you are required to interact with things you have no real reason to suspect aren't decoration in order to progress, and I did get stuck there, but that's the only thing I can think of. The story is excellently paced with events that catch your interest and move the plot along nicely. The decoration is beautiful and helps set a strong tone of corruption, ruin and chaos.
Just look at the way this screen is composed! Look how the shadows frame the house. This is the first screen. Right away you know you're in for a good time.
An evil wizard (I feel like I am starting to wear out the phrase "evil wizard") named Odium Interitus has turned the blacksmith in the town of Foulstone into a beast who makes everyone around him insane. The people of the town have become mindless killers, like zombies without actually being undead. Dink and the wizard Martridge must follow the blacksmith's trail (good title synergy) of destruction, confront Odium and put a stop to the blacksmith-beast. Along the way, you'll have to deal with the mad townsfolk. Martridge will help you fight, but his spells are weak due to something Odium has done. In the end, any survivors are apparently cured, but I killed them all. The game ranks you on how many you killed - I got called a "butcher" for my trouble. Hey, it's a carnage D-Mod, what can I say? You could try to get the best rank ("Hero") for a little extra challenge.
Dink and Marty battle the mad villagers.
The fights can be pretty challenging, as many of the enemies can move very quickly. I only died once against the boss at the end, but I had a few more close calls. The gameplay felt really well-balanced. Exploring turns up a couple of helpful secrets, including a curious potion that flips between red and blue and increases strength or defense depending on when you pick it up.
You can pick up hints here and there of how things went as things went south in Foulstone. There's an old meeting place with messages posted about the spreading magical "contagion," which end abruptly. You can find the remains of a character who was so afraid he abandoned his children, and when he still couldn't escape, he killed himself rather than get swept up in the madness. It's nice to have these kinds of details rather than just being told that another town has succumbed to come catastrophe.
Despite what you might think from a mention of "contagion," there are no zombies in this D-Mod.
"Blacksmith's Trail" is the best treatment I've seen of Martridge's character. He's presented as Dink's mentor, and their dialogue here makes it a believable relationship. You can talk to him as he follows you around, and one of the things he'll discuss is the time he and Dink first met. He explains his behavior at the time - he needed to prove to Dink that magic was real and "not just some random gibberish from an old man." You don't talk to Martridge a whole awful lot and it's not like there's some deep discussion, but somehow referring back to that silly moment in a more serious context really cemented the relationship between Dink and the ol' wizard for me in a way I'm not sure I've ever felt before. A lot of D-Mods take it as granted, when in the original game they really didn't have that much to do with each other. Remember, Dink never even saw Martridge again after killing the bonca, no matter what you do. I guess it speaks to the isolated nature of the original game when this is the relationship D-Mod authors have consistently latched onto.
Dink has to save his old friend in this D-Mod when Odium traps him in a magical stone. Unfortunately, it turns out to be for nothing. Martridge momentarily forgets that his powers have faded and confronts the blacksmith-creature, getting pounded flat as a pancake. It's presented humorously, but I felt bad for old beardy.
The blacksmith himself is a brand new 3D graphic of a huge, headless dude with hammers for hands. He has a spinning attack as well as pounding his hammer-fists together. You should keep your distance; he packs a punch. There is a little background for the blacksmith character - you meet his daughter - but he seems unable to reason very much when you run into the beast he's become.
The tragic consequences of too much iron in one's diet.
So overall, I was impressed with this one. I think I agree with the contest winner this time.
New stuff: The blacksmith and a few decorations.
Carnage rating: 5 out of 5 DDCs. There's death and destruction everywhere, you can personally kill a huge number of people, and the human cost of the carnage feels much higher than in the other entries. You get more background on the town and have more reason to care about its destruction. I feel like this really deals with the concept of "carnage" more than any other entry in the contest.
