The Dink Network

346: Bored of the Rings Author: Stomper Release Date: April 1, 2014
"Ahh, Serutanland. We had many a good field trips here in grade school."

"Bored of the Rings" is based upon a 1969 book by the same title, which obviously parodied Tolkien's famous Lord of the Rings books. The book was also adapted into a text adventure game in 1985. I've never read the book myself, nor have I read the books it parodies, although I have seen the movies.


Hee hee, made in China.

Given the inspiration for "A Fish Named Bloop" and possibly the "Quest for Dorinthia III" demo, if I had never shown up and started this project, it's possible that this would have been the first D-Mod released since "Moon Child," which came out over a year earlier. If that were the case, maybe it would have received a little more attention upon its release. As it was, it released to mostly silence. The only real feedback I've seen posted was Leprochaun's review. There had been several test versions released on the forum; it may be that anyone who was really interested had played it already by the time of its official release.

This is a pretty big D-Mod! It uses all but eight of the available screens and took me three hours and ten minutes to finish. I'm surprised I got through it even that fast considering how much stuff happens in it. The plot is so frenetic and compressed that anybody who hasn't at least seen the LOTR movies might have a hard time following what's going on.


Yeah, that's the map. Hoo boy!


Yes, I really did get through the whole thing.

"Bored of the Rings" is a parody similar to the movie and TV show parodies in Mad magazine. Just about every line of dialogue is taken as a chance to throw a gag or a reference at you. Characters have been renamed in jokey ways - Frodo is Frito, Legolas is Legolam, Gandalf is Goodgulf (an old brand of gasoline), etc. The hobbits are now the boggies, and they come from the Stye rather than the Shire, and so on. Many of the pop culture references have been updated; for example, The Simpsons didn't exist in 1969. The author also throws in some little cutscenes that aren't connected to anything in order to get even more references in, mostly to cartoons.


You know, that fits in better than I'd have thought.

I'd be lying if I said this D-Mod were a laugh-a-minute experience for me. Most of the gags either didn't land, or didn't land hard enough to make me smile, let alone laugh. I did get a few good laughs out of it, though. I liked how the Balrog has been replaced by the "Ballhog," a selfish, shoot-first basketball player. I laughed out loud when I realized how this gave new meaning to the statement, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" The Ballhog is also represented by an image of Wile E. Coyote, which confused me until he and Goodgulf fell from the bridge - the author seized the perfect opportunity to make a typical "Wile E. Coyote falls down" gag.


Nicely done.

I also enjoyed the appearance of the Jolly Green Giant, who made lots of plant puns like "I want to make peas with you," much to the chagrin of the boggies, who moan and cry for mercy. And then there were some references that I really enjoyed because they felt personal to me. A series of signs along the road tell you how far you are from "Santa's North of the Border;" going up Interstate 95 here in the eastern United States, your eyes are assaulted by an unbelievably long series of similar signs advertising an almost infinitely tacky tourist trap in South Carolina (I've been there - it sucks). Since I'm personally familiar with that, the reference really tickled me. Similarly, there are signs telling you to "See Rock City" and "Rudy Falls." All throughout this region are signs cajoling you to see Rock City and Ruby Falls on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee. Actually, if you're ever in the Chattanooga area, I highly recommend Ruby Falls, which is located in a gorgeous cavern deep underground that's full of interesting rock formations.


Rock city, on the other hand, isn't too different from this.

Of course, many of the jokes do focus on Lord of the Rings in one way or another. Some are just typical old-fashioned one-liners transposed into the LOTR setting. Then there are jokes aplenty that make light of Tolkien's serious epic story. My favorite of these was the fact that Mordor (called Twodor, I think?) seems to be a theme park like Disney World with long lines and a FastPass option.


Frito tries to suggest easier methods of disposing of The Ring.

You end up in some pretty odd settings, including a big shopping mall. My favorite shop there is the "Build-a-Bonca Workshop," a take-off on the Build-a-Bear Workshop chain of make-your-own-teddy-bear stores.


These backgrounds are loaded using the load_tiles command. I mention this because Dink HD doesn't support this command. Don't try to play this in Dink HD.

The author claims that this D-Mod is "like Final Fantasy" in that the party changes frequently as characters join and leave. This is technically true, but it doesn't feel like it. Which characters you have in your party doesn't matter an awful lot, honestly. This is mainly because whoever you're playing as, their unique sprite will only display when you're idle. Whenever you walk or attack, you turn into Dink Smallwood. This breaks the feeling that you're playing as whatever character you're supposed to be; honestly, it makes the whole game feel broken and unfinished. You're expected to just pretend that you can't clearly see that you're Dink. Much is made of the fact that you can press the "S" key to switch your party around. The character in front is who you'll see when you stand still, and there are a few differences between them (Goodgulf has magic - that's the major one). You then pick a second character to "defend," which affects your defense stat. Each character has their own attack and defense stat that is saved throughout the game. This all sounds monstrously complicated, but I assure you that in practice, all of it amounts to next to no difference from playing a regular D-Mod. I practically never rearranged my party. I played as Stomper (the character you start with, a parody of Aragorn) all the time except when he wasn't in the party, in which case I played as Goodgulf or whoever had the highest attack stat. I barely noticed any difference. The whole system feels kind of superfluous. Stats don't even matter that much; there's little in the way of required combat. What is there is easy because defeating enemies awards hidden "attack and defense experience," raising these stats quite frequently.


Here's Stomper, our hero...


But take a step, and he's Dink! It's even more jarring with other characters who look nothing like Dink at all.


There was one boss that made an impression on me. Before you can hit Serutan aka Saruman aka Crono, you have to hit his bubble with a bunch of shots, gradually shrinking it until it disappears.

I'd also like to point out that this D-Mod uses Dnotalk and Dnomagic to change the default texts. However, the author made the bizarre decision to make one of the random "talking to nothing" messages try to do 1 damage to you (!!). At least the messages change partway through the game, so you no longer have to worry about this. The "no magic" messages have some amusing references to stage magic.


I protest! I never pressed any space bar!

"Bored of the Rings" uses a huge amount of imported graphics. The graphics folder is over 53 megabytes! The graphics were used totally without regard to how well they fit into Dink's world (answer: not at all). Even so... they kind of work, here. Sort of. Look, I've seen much worse looking graphics in a D-Mod (see: "Bishop's Quest"), and I kind of feel like pasting in stuff that doesn't really fit is still preferable to using that same old set of graphics to try and represent things that just aren't there, stretching the association so far that you have to just use text to tell the player what they're supposed to be seeing (many D-Mods have done this). "Bored of the Rings" refuses to be boxed in by such limitations, and I can admire that. Some cutscenes abandon the usual perspective entirely to stage a scene on a different type of background.


A cutscene where the party defeats a "Disco Yeti" inexplicably turns into a Pokémon battle. Why not? I guess a disco ball is like a pokéball.


This scene has a nice little effect where your character appears smaller as you walk toward the background.


Seriously though, what game am I playing right now? I've forgotten. Is it Leisure Suit Larry 7 ? I don't remember it having this many horror movie killers in it.

A walkthrough is included in the story folder. For most of the game, I didn't need it. Objectives were pretty clear; either you just followed the road, or a character would tell you what to do. I finally had to consult the guide in a maze near the end. This D-Mod is absolutely packed with mazes. I feel confident in saying that this is the maziest D-Mod ever. I was able to get through most of the mazes by wandering around and/or tracing the right wall, but the last maze involves hitting switches to move walls, and sometimes you had to backtrack and hit switches you've already hit again to turn them off, which I found terribly confusing. It's a good thing I had the guide out, because the section after that is pure evil. There are a bunch of ziplines over pits, and if you take the wrong one (there's no way to know but trial and error), you fall and get sent back to the middle of the previous maze and have to muck about switches some more. And no, there's no savebot in this section. Screw. That. Noise. That is SCREAMINGLY bad game design. Ugggh. Use the walkthrough when you get there if you play this.


One of the mazes has these hexagonal panels, but you can't tell which ones are hard until you try to walk through them. It's awfully confusing, but I muddled my way through.

Unfortunately, this D-Mod feels really unfinished and rough. There has been an update since Leprochaun's review, and it addresses some of his complaints, but only partially. MIDIs have been added, but there are still large segments of the game that are silent. There's more decoration (and I should note that there are a HUGE number of scripted objects), but there are still many basically blank screens and several actually blank screens. Most hardness errors must have been fixed because there aren't many of them, but there are a few problematic ones that let you go places you shouldn't. A couple of cutscenes repeat if you return to the screen where they happen, and these are cutscenes which make no sense when repeated. I ran into a freeze bug (but only one, which is nice). I did have the game crash once, but it was in windowed mode, and I get a lot of crashes when I play in windowed mode. Some collectibles leave a hard spot on the map, and some screens have no borders, usually causing an "invisible wall" but in a few cases allowing you to walk to an unrelated screen! Tiling throughout the D-Mod is very poor, especially in caves. "Bored of the Rings" works, and is playable, but the whole thing just feels rough around the edges and kind of jury-rigged.


Hurts to look at this. I mean... yuck. There are so many screens like this one.


I have to admit, though: turning the cliffs on their side works better than I'd have guessed.


The freeze bug is caused by hitting this desk, in case Stomper reads this and wants to fix it.

But I don't mean to dump on this D-Mod too badly. It's a big project with effort and care put into it, and it's more playable and even more enjoyable than an awful lot of D-Mods I've played. Hell, it's a considerably less frustrating experience than "Stone of Balance," and yes, I mean that. It also makes me rethink what can or should be done with a D-Mod. I mean, you can make the game display any sort of graphic. You can bend the medium here in strange ways if you want to. Stomper had the gumption and the willpower to try, and that impresses me. This D-Mod still needs a lot of work, but I feel like it's a shame it didn't get a little more attention than it did. I'd like to encourage stomper to work on it or other D-Mods more in the future.