How Far Did We Get in January?

[jdavid]

#8275

After a late start well into the month, I eventually made it to level 19 of 20 before January ended. I was planning to finish all the last 3 levels on the night of the 31st, but after the slog of level 18 and the shock at finding you have to do level 19 without access to training, I’ve decided to let it go into February.

How far did you get before time ran out?

[TigerQuoll]

#8283

Not very far I’m afraid… just last night (the 1st of February) I beat the first level against another Deungeon Keeper (whichever number that is. Level 5? Level 6?)

I had a very DOS issue hold me back though. Being a total masochist, I generally prefer to play on real hardware. In this case it was a Pentium I 166 that I have been using for some years for DOS Game club games and all sorts of other tinkering and mucking about. It hasn’t been cleaned up or reinstalled in a very long time.
Anyway, I got halfway through this level about a week ago when the game ground to a halt, with constant disk accesses. I then realised the whole hard disk was chock-a-block full and horribly fragmented, as well as needing a serious scandisk.
So I spent a few days cleaning up and servicing the hard drive instead of playing DK haha!
Remember defragging and surface scans? Good times…
Anyway, the game runs like a charm now!

Not sure if anyone needed to know all that, but thought I’d share anyway 😉

I might go back to DK this month and see how far I can get – depending on how much Empire tickles my fancy.

[DJ_HiP]

#8285

Haha TigerQuoll.

[jdavid]

#8286

TigerQuoll, there’s not much that’s more “DOS games” than what you described!

[Wesbat]

#8288

I reached Level 7, Wishvale. At that point I started to feel the repetition set in, but play was still engaging enough. Not sure for how much longer, however.

I should probably mention that I wasn’t able to play with the rotating 3d view, I used the fixed top-down setting.

Regrettably, I didn’t reach the secret disk defragment level 😁

[jdavid]

#8290

I don’t think I started to feel fatigued by the game until the final three levels. Usually, real-time strategy wears me out pretty fast, as I’m a turn-based 4x “stan” for life. 🙂 Maybe it’s because the combat is so simple compared to the greats of the RTS genre.

Still, the last three levels left me ready to quit. Earlier levels didn’t really prepare you for the strategies you’d need in those levels, so it almost felt unfair. I mean, before 18, I hadn’t bothered with sacrificing nor scavenging, things that became necessary at the end. Perhaps if they’d eased those concepts in over the course of the game, others wouldn’t have found it so repetitive, while those of us who were enjoying the leisurely pace wouldn’t have felt blindsided by the final levels.

Still, I haven’t had this much fun revisiting a favorite from the DOS era for a long time. So glad I joined in with the fun. Now on to Empire.

[Martli]

#8323

This was my first time playing this game, and first time doing a DCG game of the month. I think I made it to about level 4 or 5 before deciding to move on. Apparently this means I didn’t even make it past the tutorial levels, perhaps I should have persevered for a better experience! In my defence, I did get a little side-tracked this month with the birth of my second son :-).

I think the approach to combat (or lack thereof) is ultimately what put me off going deeper into this game.

On the positive side, I really liked the dark vibe of this game, the gritty dungeons, the beastly creatures inhabiting a grim underbelly, the overtly lovey-dovey township names, the misanthropic narrator, and general doom and gloom. The game is really quite unique in this regard.

The dungeon building was kinda fun (once I got the hang of how big to build each room), but started to feel somewhat formulaic after a while. I also liked the excitement of exploration, and trying to prioritise which rooms to build when and where.

But I just couldn’t help feeling that when it came to combat it was all just a bit random. Each fight just felt like I was flailing about helplessly and ultimately succeeding, and that it was ultimately just a numbers game (number of creatures and training level).

I think I will revisit this game eventually, but I’ll have to start from scratch as I accidentally lost my save game in an overzealous clearout of my DOS PC (also a pentium MMX, although I’m using a CF card so no defragging on that!).