A Dwarvish-Mead Dream
A great game that takes you to some really fantastic and interesting places is only undermined by laspes in gameplay.
One can not complain about the graphics, coolzx is (in this humble zzter's opinion) one of the best, if not the best, graphical artist the game has ever seen. But like other masters of aesthetics (WiL) the game itself falters in key places. The sword fight is intensly annoying and the final battle is absurd. You're only allowed to move left and right but there is an object that shoots horizontally at you. The actual dungeon portions of the game are fairly weak in some places, but a lot stronger in others. The future area, while awesome looking, is extremely difficult in comparison to the rest of the game. The RPG battles are what saves the game with excellently drawn enemies and a fairly simple but never annoying battle system. The simplicity of the battle system is excuseable what with the amount of other features in the game, but had the actual game been better, we would not have needed the RPG battles.
The music is nothing special but works. Better than I could do, but not better than the works of WiL or Madtom.
The story is interesting and rather fun, but the writing is weak with the dialoge between characters simple and formulaic. The ending is cluttered and forced, with a disapointing climax to boot.
I'm going to get a lot of flak for this score but mainly it's to balance the two perfect fives that I don't think this game deserves.
Well, it's a typical style adventure game... hero, some villains, and a linear storyline... but it's all still pretty good. what's charming about this game is that it's easy to play... there's some text, but there's still a lot of boards where the character gets to move around and do his own thing. some people forget that you make games with zzt, not books.
coolzx games are awesome, and this is no exception. it's hard to question a master.
It seems to be very Anthony Testa-influenced (Dungeon Master's Gallery?) well, sory if I am wrong. But coolzx did a good job with a dungeon crawl. I love this type of game, and its very well done.
The plot is sorta cliched, but still very interesting with its twists. The graphics were well-done, including a very nicely thought-out theme screen that you see after playing a few boards. There were few musical additions, but those that existed were good enough.
The fighting system is balanced, I must think A great difficulty with designing RPGs, roguelikes, or ZZT games which simulate them is probably how to make the game not too hard in the beginning or not too easy to the end. Coolzx seemed to have playtested it enough to make it challenging yet not overboard throughout hte whole game. The final battle is very satisfying, and the idea of conserving limited resources is greatly appreciated.
Thanks! A nice title indeed.
-Yan
