Indeed.
Dink Smallwood is a Comedy Role-Playing Game, telling the standard tale of a farm boy who dreams of becoming a mighty warrior, after Dink receives a visit from a local wizard. Dink's house burns down in a fire, killing his mother and beginning his epic and snarky journey to save the kingdom from cults, rogue knights, goblins, famine, and an ancient who destroyed all other ancients. Also, let's not forget the evil furniture.The game was developed by Robinson Technologies, released in 1997 with a shareware version online. In 1999, Seth released the game as freeware, and can be downloaded here
. Even later, Dink became open source (using a variant of the license of zlib) in hopes of making it available on more systems. (If your operating system isn't supported by official freeware version, there may be a version of GNU FreeDink, which replaces all components not covered by the zlib-like license, available.)
The game also includes tools for creating new adventures for Dink called "D-Mods". One D-Mod by the developer, Mystery Island, is included with the official release of the game (GNU FreeDink users will need to install it separately using the included DFArc utility). Other D-Mods, along with the bulk of the Dink community, can be found at The Dink Network.
Examples of tropes from Dink Smallwood:
The original game
- All Myths Are True: It is claimed in-story that "Joppa Isle doesn't exist, it's just a story for kids." After you solve the food shortages in Windemere, you discover a secret tunnel that leads directly to Joppa Isle.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Goblins. With the exception of one living on the nearby beach, the goblins that reside in the Goblin Sanctuary are not friendly, and will always deal damage to you through Collision Damage even if you don't provoke them.
- Anti-Hero: Smallwood may be The Hero, but he's far from being a hero. He's a whiny, perverted Jerkass who can engage in some truly awful Video Game Cruelty Potential. The one thing that keeps him from being a full-blown Villain Protagonist is that despite all this, his quest is genuinely heroic.
- Asshole Victim: Your uncle, Jack, is consistently rude to you and abuses his wife Maria. If you decide to beat him to death, he stays dead for the rest of the game without any effect to the plot. In fact, your aunt gets over it in a minute.
- Author Avatar: Seth Robinson, the game's designer, appears as the Final Boss.
- Awesome, but Impractical: For the point in the game where it's obtained (right before The Very Definitely Final Dungeon), Hellfire is outclassed by your physical attacks in terms of damage output over time, in addition to many late-game monsters (including Stone Giants and Dragons) being very resistant or outright immune to magic and its agonizingly slow charging time making it impractical to use even if you collected all of the purple magic-boosting potions from the overworld.
- Bare Hands Barely Hurt: Dink can punch things from the start of the game, but it's relatively slow, very short range, and does little damage, forcing him to use Hit-and-Run Tactics to face even weak monsters. Once he has any kind of sword, or the speed boots, there's no reason to ever fight with just fists anymore.
- Belief Makes You Stupid: The people of Windemere worship ducks. The town is suffering from a famine, as they offer all of their food to the ducks. It's only when Dink kills them all that they realize they could just eat the ducks instead.
- Betting Mini-Game: The giant ducks of Koka Isle have fights between each other. The host duck invites Dink to place bets on which side he thinks will win.
- Big "NO!": When Dink sees his burning house and his mother in it.
- Bottomless Magazines: You never run out of arrows in the game.
- Broken Bridge: Your first time into Cerris, the bridge leading into the nearby town of Windemere is out, and will not be repaired until you complete the quest in Kernsin.
- Chivalrous Pervert: The degree of chivalry is partly for the player to decide, but Dink is always a pervert.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: The citizens of Windemere worship and offer their meals to the local duck population in their sanctuary to the point of starving themselves. You must enter the sanctuary and kill every duck inside to solve the food shortages and trigger an event that unlocks a hidden tunnel to Joppa Isle.
- Death of a Child: The Dead Dragon Carcass Cult is made of what appear to be young girls, though they turn out to be demonic shapeshifters, transforming into Boncas after you reveal yourself. A more straightforward example is that Mary, the young girl being held hostage, can be caught in the crossfire, costing you the quest (and your life) if she dies. You can off your gossipy neighbor with no consequence, though.
- Die, Chair, Die!: A running gag, both on the main game and some D-MODS. A quarter of the fun is in finding what inanimate things answer to your violence.
- Domestic Abuse: Dink sees his aunt Maria being beaten by her husband, which he apparently does a lot.
- Easing into the Adventure: The game starts with your mom asking you to feed the pigs.
- Game Mod: Fan-made adventures ("D-MODS") are still produced to this day.
- Golem: Stone Giants are gorilla golems that inhabit the Edge of the World and, fittingly, are some of the tankiest monsters in the game.
- Heart Container: Golden hearts boost Dink's maximum health.
- Hellfire: The spell that bears its name. Functionally, it is an upgraded version of the Fire spell.
- Incest Subtext: After killing her abusive husband, you suggest to your aunt Maria sharing a bed with her because yours is too small. She refuses for obvious reasons, with Dink only responding with "And?"
- Instant Roast: In Windemere, killing the ducks will instantly turn them into a fully-cooked roast bird. Dink claims that this is because of the friction caused by hitting them.
- Jerk Jock: Milder Flatstomp. While Dink is questing, Milder wins a jousting tournament and becomes a knight.
- Killer Rabbit: Within the Darklands is a flock of hostile ducks that you must kill to advance.
- Law of Cartographical Elegance: Inverted. The countryside is a blobby landmass surrounded by question-marked land.
- Limited Animation: The design and animation of the in-game models are very basic. Characters have a tendency to walk around sideways even when they're moving in a cardinal direction. It suits the game's lo-fi charm and absurdist atmosphere.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Blood splatter happens a lot in this game. Decapitating or exploding livestock deserves special mention.
- The Lost Woods: Murkwood Forest, home of the Dead Dragon Carcass cult.
- Major Injury Underreaction: The duck fights that occur between the giant ducks of Koka Isle cause the loser to utter "You win this time." or "You've beaten me." while decapitated.
- Monster Town: The Goblin Sanctuary.
- Mordor: The Darklands, which serves as the final area of the game before the Final Boss and is home to many dragons and other high-powered monsters.
- One-Shot Revisionism: The title character can engage in Comedic Sociopathy, both by abusing Video Game Cruelty Potential, and through scripted events. This is subverted a few times.
- In the starter town, if Dink hits one of his neighbors, she screams and runs up and down. Makes sense, but why does everyone else stand still when taking a beating?
- Dink can choose to kill his wife-beating uncle. A hard battle, depending on when the player decides to do it, but winnable. Why, then, can't he hurt anyone else with his attacks (other than enemies/ducks)?
- Dink can try to rob a tavern, in which case, the waitress will call two golden-armored halbardiers. If the player chooses this course of action when he first visits the tavern, the halbardiers are too powerful, and will undoubtedly kill him. But, if the player tries the robbery out after some Level Grinding, he can beat them, at which point, nothing happens, the dialog tree remains the same, and threatening to rob the place again causes two new halbardiers to show up.
- Parental Abandonment: Dink's father is notably absent.
- Playing with Fire: The first spell Dink learns is a fireball spell, and some trees are flammable, hiding underground treasure troves.
- Port Town: A city called PortTown is mentioned several times, but is otherwise never seen in-game.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Many of the songs in the game are MIDI renditions of classical music. You might recognize compositions by Schubert, Bach, Debussy, Mendelssohn, and Strauss throughout the game.
- Quacking Up: Ducks are a running gag in the game.
- Religion of Evil: The Dead Dragon Carcass Cult.
- Save Point: Some type of infernal machine appearing from place to place, which allows saving the game. Redundant in the HD version which now allows saving at any time.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: During the boss fight with the demonized Bishop Nelson's Dead Dragon Carcass Cult, your fight for your life is accented by... Blue Danube.
- Stone Wall: Taken to a ridiculous extreme with a lone pig in the Darklands. It isn't hostile and has no attacks, but it has large amount of health and will give 5000 experience points if slain.
- Surreal Humor: The game presents itself as a boilerplate fantasy game but then it's full of bizarre non-sequiturs and unexpected stabs of black comedy. This is first seen when Dink chastises his neighbor's pet duck to return home after running off, whereupon the duck says "Bite me." Dink can also do and say some decidedly unheroic things that are played for absurd comedy.
- Swiss-Cheese Security: Lampshaded in a house in KernSin.Man: What the hell are you doing?
Dink: What do you mean?
Man: I mean you just barging in here, no knocking, nothing! What's with that?
Dink: (pause) And there's like... something WRONG with that? - Unique Enemy: There are two variations of the Pillbug enemy in the overworld that appear exactly once and don't respawn. These include a Pillbug in the starting area that uses Boss Banter to taunt the player and speeds up when hit, and a giant Pillbug that is naturally fast and has slightly more health than the normal and strong varieties encountered elsewhere.
- Useless Useful Spell: The scroll chant spell is only used once to enter Murkwood Forest.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can attack not only enemies, but almost any NPC in the game. Some get annoyed at you, some beg you to stop, and some can actually be killed. And some dialogue options can be even more cruel than that: your aunt is a victim of Domestic Abuse, and you get the option to encourage her husband to further beat her.
- Wife-Basher Basher: Jack, your aunt Maria's husband, regularly beats her. If this pisses you off, you're given the option to kill him, though he's a very challenging enemy at the point in the game where you first meet him.
Mystery Island
After saving the world, Dink thought he'd be hailed as a hero and live his life in luxury. Instead, the king sends him to deliver a letter. After a long and perilous journey, a storm leaves Dink stranded on a strange, seemingly-abandoned island full of evil robots.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Drag-Bots were meant to teach the villagers how to grow corn, but the Ninja Bot, a discarded project, reprogrammed them to kill.
- Animorphism: Drinking from the fountain in town will turn Dink into a duck. Drinking it again will change him back.
- Bittersweet Ending: Neither of the two endings is completely happy:
- If Dink freaks out, he ends up getting rescued and goes back home, but leaves Cass behind, dooming her.
- If Dink stays calm, he and Cass escape on an airship, but don't know where it's going. Dink doesn't get reunited with his crew and doesn't get back home, but Cass thinks of him as a hero.
- Butt-Monkey: Everyone on the ship's crew picks on Peter, making fun of him, joking about killing him, and possibly even killing him (which nets a Non-Standard Game Over). Dink and Captain Cedric may admit to him that hazing a sailor on his first voyage is tradition.
- Deus ex Machina: In both endings: either a friendly robot pops out of nowhere and reveals to Dink and Cas that there's an airship they can use to escape, or Cedric turns out to have survived the storm and shows up right as Dink runs out of the cave to rescue him.
- Last-Second Ending Choice: There are two endings; which one you get depends on whether you decide to have Dink keep calm or freak out after the underground base starts to self-destruct:
- If you freak out, Dink will start yelling about how pointless and terrible this adventure has been and go Screw This, I'm Outta Here, running away while leaving Cass behind. He dashes all the way back to where he first landed on the island, where he's found by Cedric and brought back home. During the credits, it's confirmed that Cass dies as a result of this.
- If you keep calm, a friendly robot, Droid 3, will appear and tell Dink and Cass that there's an airship they can use to escape. The two get on board, not knowing where they're going, but at least they're both going to survive.
- Mecha-Mooks: Drag-Bots are dragon-like robots who are responsible for massacring the island's villagers.
- Mini-Game: One of three minigames can happen during each step of the voyage. As there are more than three steps, you'll end up playing each game multiple times:
- Giant sharks block the ship's way. Dink must navigate past them, Frogger-style.
- The crew starts a Vomit Chain Reaction and Dink must keep the ship clean until they can get their stomachs back under control.
- The ship ends up in the Cave of Terror, where your fears come true, and Dink must help the crew Think Happy Thoughts to stay safe. This one is a Luck-Based Mission.
- Science Fantasy: After his fantasy-themed adventure, Dink ends up on an island swarming with evil robots.
- Sinister Surveillance: The robots have installed cameras all around the village (including its pumpkin patch) to plan out their attacks. Dink must destroy them all to allow Cass to leave her basement safely.
- Sole Survivor: Cassandra is the only person who survived the robots' assault on the town, as she hid in the basement.
- Timed Mission: There's a timer counting down when you're destroying the cameras. If it reaches zero, robots will suddenly appear and kill Dink.
- Think Happy Thoughts: To get past the Cave of Terror, which makes your fears come true, Dink must help Peter by telling him to think of something happy. You can choose a duck, little girl, or rock monster. It's a Luck-Based Mission whether this works, or the thing Peter thinks of kills him as revenge for throwing rocks during his childhood.
- Vomit Chain Reaction: One Mini-Game during the voyage has Peter get seasick and throw up. This makes Cedric sick, which in turn makes Henry sick, and the three just keep making each other throw up over and over again. Dink must then hurry up to clean up the puke before the ship is overwhelmed.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The Final Boss is invulnerable to all of Dink's attacks. However, it does have a weak point... on its feet, which Dink can't hit, but ducks can. The seemingly-useless duck summoning spell you get from turning into a duck and mating is the boss' weakness.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The plot point of delivering the king's letter is completely dropped after Dink ends up on the island.
