[h1]Overview[/h1]
Damned Daniel is a wonderfully hilarious and vulgar comedy RPG from the Red Mouse Studio. It follows an alchemist known as Daniel who is stuck trying to turn his failing business when he's given a mysterious tome that promises success with enigmatic costs. It's a turn-based RPG and while the game struggles with the turn-based combat, it succeeds with clever writing that takes the player on a funny and yet, disturbing journey to help Daniel achieve his dreams of success.
[b](+) Pros[/b]
• Hilarious dialogue
• Straightforward controls
• Characters you're interested in
[b](-) Cons[/b]
• weak turn-based combat
• a very short game
[h1]General Gameplay[/h1]
The gameplay centers on exploration and turn-based combat. You control an alchemist known as Daniel in a small town where he's struggling to make a living for himself. Each day brings new characters to your little shop who place simple requests such as a cure for Herpes or a tea that will help them 'trip balls'. From here, your character is tasked with gathering ingredients to help the towns citizen's usually in the form of combat.
To be fair, this is a small studio and it's understandable that they didn't have time to fully explore and developing an in-depth combat system. And to the games credit, where it lacks in combat it makes up for it in world design and dialogue. This is a game for those who enjoy reading. While you'll have on occasion the opportunity to battle enemies and spar witty banter with them, it is fairly standard and doesn't really do anything new, especially if you've played any other game with turn-based combat. There's a few issues when it comes to combat because the game doesn't really explain how it functions and you learn through a series of trials and error.
With that said, let's take a gander at the story and world.
[h1]Story & World[/h1]
As stated, you play a down-on-your-luck amateur alchemist known as Daniel in a delightly vulgar world. You'll be sexually harassed by many folks, help friends cure their STD's, and a host of other issues. While you're in competition trying to keep your doors open, you're given a mysterious tome that promises you untold fortune and fame. Albeit, the price for each alchemical experiment is potentially dark and disturbing. But nothing can stop Daniel in his quest to save his dying business.
The story is both funny and offensive in a good way. It plays on modern understanding of social norms and you're given a host of situations to navigate. However, the story doesn't accept player input and while this could be a negative for many players, it's possibly the best thing found in this game. While not all the jokes worked for me, it was still enjoyable to follow Daniel and see how he tries to better his lot in life. If you're interested in playing this game, it needs to be said you're doing it for the story primarily. The only real downside to the story is given how short the game is.
[h1]Sound[/h1]
Music is fine; nothing phenomenal or memorable but it does a good job at creating and maintaining the atmosphere. It is a small library of sounds and music but it gets the job done.
[h1]Visuals & Performance[/h1]
The game is very simply animated, making use of sprites with easy controls. I encountered no problems while playing and no bugs/crashes. It's a simple little game but every character looks distinct and is easily identifiable.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
Like most games, I'd argue that this game isn't for everyone. The turn-based combat is very simplistic with no explanations and while it can be fun, you're mostly going to focus on the story and characters. The story is a hilarious and delightful, but the only real downside is given the game length; I finished the game after exploring everything I could within 3 hours. It ends on a cliffhanger, but if Red Mouse Studio's continues the story, I'd be one of the first in line to see how the game progresses and evolves with time.
[h1]PC Specs for this review[/h1]
The computer specs that I used for this review are listed below:
- CPU: i5-6600k CPU @ 3.50GHz
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, 8GB
- RAM: 16.0 GB
- SSD: 500 GB
- HDD: 1 TB
[h1]Final Score: [8.5] out of 10[/h1]
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[b]*Product Received For Free*[/b]
