Dink Smallwood
Hah! Who needs 3d, innovation and 32 bit (or even 16 bit) colour? Who needs to have a large development house and astronomical budget to produce a fun game? Not RT soft anyway. Dink Smallwood is a classic RPG of the viewed-from-above, walking-around-killing-almost-everything-that-moves, completing-quests-and-amassing-experience-style, and it's great fun while it lasts. The story kicks off with you feeding the pigs and finding a lost duck, then suddenly your house burns down and your mother is killed, and you're on your own. Gameplay consisting of mostly moving about and killing monsters might sound boring, but remember that Diablo works the very same way, and that game is pretty fun too. The thing I like best about Dink is that there aren't too large distances to cover, and yet there's plenty to explore and quite a few secret bonuses to find. Dink also has quite a bit of humour (and ducks too for that matter ...) to give it its own twist.
Another good point of Dink is the editability. Using the included Dink Editor and a bit of programming knowledge, you can create your own DMods, or even a whole new game. The editor certainly isn't as easy to use as StarEdit or anything, but on the other hand you can do anything done in the game and more with it (it's what the game is done with after all).
So, is it worth paying full price for? Well, I don't think I would. Fortunately, Dink is completely free nowadays, and you can download it directly from RT soft. The full game download, including a small expansion called Mystery Island, is only 25 megabytes, that's half the size of the UT demo ... It sure is worth that time ...
