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Level: Legendary Smitemaster
Rank Points: 8
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File: Rock Island.drh (3.2 KB)
Downloaded 289 times.
License: Other
From: Unspecified

Tendry engages in an epic battle atop a really small rock. Well alright then, maybe it's not all that epic.

This RPG hold is a full RPG experience in the space of a single room. Kill monsters, open doors and gain stats!

superluminal
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 75
Registered: 05-26-2016
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So. This hold. What can I say about it?

There are monsters, yes. So too are there doors to open. And indeed, one can find stat-boosting items. There is also a final boss as well as a scorepoint at the end. I got 276 on my first try, in case you're interested.

That's what this hold is. But what does it mean?

In the end, this is an experience best experienced with experience. That's the truth of it. Will it change your worldview? Will it shock you and revile you? Will it bring about the apocalypse?

I guess you'll have to find out. And that's the best part of experience. You'll never know for sure.

5 brains, 7 fun. "Would download again."

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spacelike

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2842
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Once upon a time I tried to post a review of every RPG hold. Can I review my own holds? Well it's too late to stop me now!

An idea I once had was to make a hold of gimmicky one-room standalone levels. For example, there was the room where all of the floor tiles were hot tiles, like that entry in the 2018 Year of RPG contest except with % damage and without any of the fun. Or the one where you had a grappling hook and all the floor tiles were trapdoors, and a bunch of enemies that you hit like goblins would.

You might be thinking to yourself, "Wow, that sounds horrible and no fun at all!" And you'd be right! It wasn't. Which is why they don't exist any more. But there was one room that I did complete called Rock Island, and many years later, it got published as a standalone hold.

But quite frankly, I shouldn't have bothered.

The central gimmick is a room that is a loop and you can choose to go in either direction. Except the balance is so poor that one of them is very clearly non-viable right from the start. The enemies start off far too strong to be worthwhile to engage with, so you have no choice but to do a loop and pick up the stats you can get by fighting the one weak enemy type or by taking damage from monsters that attack the squares next to them.

But then there are other poor balance issues, like the greckle gates that are so expensive that you can only open just one of them, and really late, and they let you do things like fight eyeball enemies from behind, except the only way you're realistically affording to open that door is if you've already killed them by bringing them down to 0 damage.

This room just isn't constructed very well at all. Other people have done one room gimmicks much better, see for example the entry One in the the 2016 Year of RPG compilation. Go play that instead, and give this one a miss.

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[Last edited by kieranmillar at 10-24-2020 03:24 PM]