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Finding Adventures in the Dark

Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…Crypt of the Soothing Melody

7/28/2025

2 Comments

 
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A dungeon by Jean-Claude ''Raznag'' Tremblay, level ???
Written for Heroes of Cerulea
  Heyo, look what we’ve got cooking…it’s another dungeon made with an 8-bit retro visual style. This is like catnip to your humble reviewer, loading him up with nostalgia and filling his heart with hope and childlike happiness. Your humble reviewer is always and invariably crushed, dear reader. This twelve-page little product covers a fifteen-room tomb for a bespoke indie little system I know nothing about, so we’re going to be in our comfort zone for itch’n. The system, for what it’s worth, is leaning hard into the retro videogame feel, with bots, bombs, and an explicit miniboss called out in the text.
  Our hook is as simple as it gets, there are random snatches of music sounding from within the crypt of a long-dead famous bard. Get ye therefore in yon tomb and somehow both settle the restless spirit(s) within and also loot the place silly. Exorcisms are cheap when you hire tomb raiders. The players wander semi-randomly through the Minesweeper-looking map rooms, encountering a mixture of undead and bots, bumping into standard issue traps and challenges in the “shove the heavy statue” school of dungeon design. Final destination leads to fighting the skeletonized bards and getting The McGuffin Orb, which our author promises will be followed up on later. All well and good.
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 Putting aside aesthetics (and I love the internal 8-bit art too), what I liked here were the few vague grasps towards puzzle-based gameplay. Keys and/or bombs to open stuck passages, that’s good. There’s a good idea about Dead Bard’s music being written in various areas and playing his songs at him in the final fight will weaken him. The magic item loot is a harp that lulls to sleep randomly, that’s a good item. Good ideas, struggling to be born.
  Sadly, first of what can be improved is “break out the forceps and help, dangit”. The keys are just things that auto-drop when whatever the rooms’ fight is gets defeated. The referenced songs aren’t really explicated. Despite the initial impression, the map is purely linear, branches only, never looping and zero exploratory gameplay enabled. The bullet-format, as usual, drops needed information while also robbing us of any interesting flavor. Enter room, fight, enter room, fight, enter room, fight…it’s in keeping with the aesthetic but even then the old games had wandering monsters and interesting mapping. The miniboss and the final boss have random attack routines, which means fighting them can be a little random. Finally, let us loot that lute, the skeleton bard uses his lute as a weapon and a magic item, it’s terrible that players don’t get that one explained.
  Clearly the best use case is “disappoint a hopeful reviewer gulled once again by the charming art”. If a group plays in this they won’t have a terrible time, but it’s more of a nostalgic simulacrum of gaming than gaming proper. Using the module for the art would be okay too I guess.
  Final Rating? */***** is all I can grant despite wanting to like it more. The dearth of creativity and interest here makes me sad, but it’s ultimately inoffensive. ​
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2 Comments
Jacob72
7/30/2025 04:30:57 pm

This comes across as a Legend of Zelda gameboy cartridge inspired game using pencils, paper & dice.

Reply
Commodore
7/31/2025 06:28:38 pm

Man I wish...

Reply



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    Website for BKGibson, husband-and-wife writing team.
    ​Weblog of Ben Gibson, the main writer and publisher of Coldlight Press.
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