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January 29th 2015, 03:48 PM
custom_coco.gif
CocoMonkey
Bard He/Him United States
Please Cindy, say the whole name each time. 
348: Epochs and Aeons: Part One Author: Leprochaun Release Date: October 4, 2014
"I'lL aLwAyS wIn At EvErYtHiNg."

"Epochs and Aeons" is the best short setup for a multi-part story that I've seen in all of the D-Mods. Unfortunately, even after an update it's still held back by one particularly annoying bug.

It opens on the first screen from the original, with the same line from Dink's mom - "Dink, would you go feed the pigs?" But Dink doesn't say, "What, now?" He says, "I'd do anything for you mother. Anything." In just two lines of dialogue, we already know that we're dealing with a very different version of Dink Smallwood. The Dink we know is bored and frustrated by his mom's chores; this guy, on the other hand, is more than eager to please - he's desperate to please. This is a timid Dink Smallwood; far from wishing to break out of his quiet village life, he clings to it as the only thing he knows. You can go around Stonebrook and have altered versions of the normal conversations with the characters there. When Renton tells Dink that leaving is too dangerous, he agrees. "Good boy," praises the knight.

But Dink has bigger problems than timidity or even cowardice; he's also so dumb, it's kind of surreal. As a result, he's not even good at being a humble pig farmer. He takes every idiom literally like first-two-seasons Data, and he can never figure anything out without it being directly explained to him. He seems almost too stupid to live. It's rather odd - he doesn't act like an ordinary stupid person or a person with a mental disability. I wonder if this version of Dink is even real. Is something screwy going on here?

It sure looks that way when he tries to feed the pigs. No matter how much feed he throws, they won't eat. He becomes increasingly agitated until he starts to scream, and reality promptly flips the Hell out.


It's a glitch in the matrix!

The remainder of the D-Mod takes place in a small but mazelike and lushly decorated forest. The forest takes up only 16 screens on the map (which has just 27 in total, 9 of which are from the original game), but it has the lantern effect applied, and the paths are mazelike enough that I spent several minutes lost in it before I figured out where I was going. The forest is gorgeous and appealingly strange. Leprochaun did a great job creating a spooky but for the most part not overtly menacing atmosphere. The lantern effect, VonZeppelin's night tiles and the MIDI used for this area work well together. There are a lot of custom graphics used in this short D-Mod. New sprites provide striking highlights among the basic ones.


Hear that, Someone? Dink needs your help! You aren't just gonna leave him hanging, are you?

Once you find your way to a cabin, there's a very long cutscene (you can skip it if you've seen it before or like your story-based D-Mods to have as little story as possible). Dink meets a woman named Shiva who seems to have some kind of grudge against him, which must be a misunderstanding. It turns out that there's another Dink Smallwood, who shows up as "our" Dink hides. This Dink isn't like the Dink we know either. This guy is evil, megalomaniacal and clearly mentally unstable. He believes that the world belongs to him, and that he can therefore be as cruel as he wants. He paces back and forth constantly, maybe to intimidate Shiva but probably because he can't help it. He speaks in AlTeRnAtInG cApS (RIP spellcheck) to convey just how deranged he is. This guy is bad news, and you can really feel Shiva's frustration in being unable to fight this monster. This Dink makes quite a villain speech, I must say. Maybe he really does rule the world. When you're actually in the room with somebody like this, some self-important, violent bully, it can feel like they control everything. You feel mute, powerless, ashamed. Most of us become almost infinitely weak in the face of implacable evil. That feeling comes across in this scene.


Dink, I'm impressed! Have you been practicing your villain lines?

The main thing you do in terms of actual gameplay is a short fetch quest, and here's where I ran into a nasty bug. While wandering around the forest initially, I found two of the necessary items before arriving at the cabin. I assumed this would make my quest easy - I had two out of three items already. Instead, having the items at this point makes it impossible to continue, since the game doesn't think you have them and they're gone from their original locations. All I could do was restart the game, which didn't take so long but still felt like a real shame. I've seen discussion of further bugs, but the only other issues I ran into were minor (You can clip behind the corner of the cabin, evil Dink says "insanse" instead of "insane") or obscure (Dink sometimes slows down because he's scared of the forest, but if you restart in one of those moments, the slow speed will persist).

There's a segment at the end where you get to control Shiva. If you do a bit of poking around, you can learn that she mourns someone she looked up to, someone who sacrificed himself to save her. She thinks that it should have been her that died instead. Shiva is a fascinating character; she's got so much anger and regret tied up in her that she literally burns with it.


Then again, some things are worth getting angry over.

By the way, this D-Mod makes nice use of Dnotalk.c to provide three sets of "talking to nothing" text: One for Dink's carefree life at home, one for him scared and lost in the forest, and one for Shiva. It's nice that you can finally account for things like this.

I may have spoiled this story-based D-Mod a bit by summarizing it, but it is intended as the first part of a larger story, after all, and I don't know how I could have seriously discussed it without talking about what happens. This is a great setup and leaves you with many questions. Who is the timid Dink Smallwood, really? Where does he come from? Why did the other Dink become crazy and evil? Which one is the real Dink? Both? Neither? What are the details of Shiva's past, and can she avoid a gruesome fate that looks inevitable? I'd sure like to find out.


Here is another pretty picture from this D-Mod. Leprochaun sure can map.

349: The Woods Author: Endy Release Date: October 9, 2014
"The Yellow King DEMANDS a meeting."

This is Endy's first D-Mod released in a long time. In fact, this had come out just before I made a list of the longest release gaps in the 2006 topic, and I forgot to include Endy. Let's take another look at that list.

1. Tim Maurer - 13 years, 6 months, 19 days (Crossroads: 7/13/00 - Malachi the Jerk: 2/1/14)
2. Bill Szczytko - 12 years, 3 months, 28 days (Dorinthia 2: 2/20/00 - Dorinthia SE: 6/17/12)
3. Dan Walma - 10 years, 3 months, 7 days (Initiation: 9/29/04 - Revolution: 1/5/15)
4. Scratcher - 9 years, 8 months, 29 days (Bincabbi: 11/4/02 - Lost Forest Romp: 8/2/12)
5. Paul Pliska - 8 years, 5 months, 25 days (Triangle Mover: 2/8/04 - Dink Gets Bored: 8/2/12)
6. Metatarasal - 6 years, 8 months, 14 days (The Scourger: 11/19/05 - Quel: 8/2/12)
7. Endy - 6 years, 6 months, 11 days (Hide-n-Seek: 3/28/08 - The Woods: 10/9/14)
8. Wesley McElwee - 5 years, 10 months, 10 days (FB3: 11/15/00 - IDRTW: 9/26/06)
9. SabreTrout - 5 years, 1 month, 4 days (Basilisk Smile: 9/26/06 - Valhalla: 10/30/11)

If JVeenhof waits just a few months longer to make his comeback, he can unseat me from the top of that list. I'm just saying.

"The Woods" is a different sort of thing than any other D-Mod I've played. It's an experimental work of horror, and it does manage to be a bit creepy, or at the very least unsettling. According to the dmod.diz, it's based on a French play titled Le Roi en Jaune, but that's not strictly true. "The King in Yellow" is a book of short stories by an American author at the end of the 19th century. The first few stories in that book describe a play (also called "The King in Yellow," but translated either from or into French, presumably by a translator who went mad in the process) which drives anybody who reads the second act completely mad. If that sounds Lovecraftian, it isn't a coincidence. H.P. Lovecraft was influenced by the work and referenced it in his own. There is a published attempt to write out the whole play in French and English. Here's your chance to go mad, folks, just $31.36.

This is the second D-Mod in a row that starts in Dink's mother's house from the original game. "The Woods" also uses the original game's title screen, which is clearly an intentional design choice rather than simple laziness. This time, all of the dialogue on that screen is identical to the original game. The only difference is that you're missing your fist. You should grab that pig feed, though. You'll need it.

Everything is normal until you leave the house. During the screen transition, a vision of the burned-out version of the house flashes on the screen.


What a beautiful dream that could flash on the screen in a blink of an eye and be gone from me...

Something is off about Stonebrook. People are missing. Smilestein is there, but he won't respond to Dink's questions. If you feed the pigs, Milder shows up. He seems concerned for Dink, but Dink doesn't notice. He says his same old lines. But things don't really get weird until you talk to the well, where Dink has apparently stuffed Chealse's dead body.

The bulk of the D-Mod is spent wandering around a black void. You can hear creepy music, bells and a girl singing. Pages are strewn about with quotations from The King in Yellow. There's a trail of blood, but if you follow it, you soon come to a sign telling you to stop following it. When you stop following it, bizarre things happen. At times, the game talks directly to the player.


But I like following blood.

A unique feature of "The Woods" is that ending (the program terminating itself using kill_game) is part of the normal progression of the D-Mod. This is possible because the game can check to see whether a saved game exists with any number attached to it you like; many D-Mods have used this technique to keep information across saves. An idea I had planned for the "Dink's Demise" contest would have used kill_game like this, but I never got around to making it. When you start "The Woods" back up after it quits itself in this manner, the "Start" option will be gone. "Continue" brings up a list with a few false saves that make no sense and one for you to actually load and continue the game.


Try loading a saved game that exists, friend.

I don't want to say too much about this one because it's just a surreal experience that you have to see yourself. There is an interesting segment where you have to navigate some screens blind, without even the ability to display "talking to nothing" text to guide you. Eventually you'll meet a Yellow King and your game will end. If you try to start the game again, all you'll see is this:


And it was all yellow.

That's it. The only way to play again at this point is to delete the save files from the folder.

One of the scripts contains a hidden poem. It may be the author's original work - at least, I couldn't find any references to it online. It will never display in the game... Well, it's set to display when 1 is equal to 2, and if that ever happens you'll probably be more concerned with reality undoing itself than playing a D-Mod.

There's a typo at one point. "Quetions" instead of "questions." That's the only error I ever noticed.

"The Woods" is unique and very interesting. It and "Cycles of Evil" are the only D-Mods I've played that felt like a work of literature. Definitely give this one a go, it won't take long.


Oh, hi. I've heard you're also beauty. Is that right?

--

Would you look at that, we're all out of D-Mods that came out in a year other than the current one. Just a few more...