Diib's Dilemma

I've been playing this game since middle school, sneaking in rounds on the library computers. Diib's Dilemma is one of those games you keep going back to. The gameplay is simple but the spellbuilding system gives it a great personal flair. The game is old enough and hard enough that a complete guide for it just doesn't exist, so you don't know everything in the build tree. Cooldowns in this game are LONG. You'll spend a large chunk of your time running around the board, avoiding being utterly ransacked and destroyed by primitive but relentless AIs. If you can survive long enough for you spells to pop back up, you'll juggle remembering which squares you left traps in, timing your attacks just right so they hit before you get smacked, or crossing your fingers and hoping your summons attack the enemy chasing you instead of the others one or everything, including you, at once. Diib's Dilemma is a game of another time. Chunky, deep, and hard as #&$%. It's worth the delve.

[h1] Piece of jank. [/h1]

Diib's Dilemma повертається! Чи зможете ви впоратися з головоломкою вежі як учень-чарівник? Перемагаючи монстрів у вежі, вибирайте заклинання прямої шкоди, виклику, пастки та лікування. Станьте учнем-чарівником у цій стратегічній грі на тему фентезі. Пориньте в магічну сторону світу Mythica, борючись через таємничу вежу, куди ви були вигнані. Опануйте різноманітний список із 40 заклинань, борючись із дюжиною монстрів на понад 100 рівнях!! Секретні бонуси, заклинання та рівні дають вам багато для дослідження.

I could see someone buying this game back 20 years ago in a bargin bin and thinking it was alright, but now you can find much beter options for this small price or smaller.

I remember playing this when system shock 2 and age of empires 2. The game doesnt have much to go off of, you mainly slay the monsters till you die. I got to level 25 and was like im bored!

Diib's Dilemma is an ancient Java game from 1999. It's a whopping 24 years old at the time of this review. The game runs in a Java runtime environment and lacks proper widescreen aspect ratio support (it's locked at 4:3) or support for any modern gaming display resolutions, hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on modern gaming PCs. Alt + Tab will cause the game to crash immediately. Despite this lack of modernisation and zero testing, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an ancient game. This seems to have been put on Steam as a nostalgia gouge. I understand developers will often do these nostalgia gouges from games that were dearly loved fan favourites. But in this case Diib's Dilemma went straight into the shovelware bins at launch, it was never considered a quality game. Some context for anyone who wasn't around back then, but in 1999, PC gamers were pretty busy and pretty happy with Starcraft, Valve's Half-Life game (don't know if you heard about that one but it was pretty big), Rainbow Six, System Shock and Baldur's Gate. For context, Java games didn't quite catch on to the same extent. So if you try to take this Java game seriously, you'll see it's an old school action strategy game that revolves around building up and using powerful spells, and dodging enemies like crazy while your cooldowns tick over. And that might seem okay but the technical execution is just subpar even for 1999. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics. Comically, the game was written in Java (I'm not making this up). Talk about not using the right tools for the job. Might as well try to bake a cake with a screwdriver. The extremely poor choice of game engine here is a major contributing factor to the defects with the game. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a very healthy spike in player counts for the game. But this only appears around the same time that trading cards were applied to the game... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards. Diib's Dilemma is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $2 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised, and wasn't even that good when it was new. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again.

Pretty chill classic game. Can't go wrong giving it a shot.

还行吧。 Not Bad.

I played this game when I was in gradeschool and tooled around with it every once in a while since. I've grown up (a bit), got my first job, gone to university, had my heart broken, paid bills, found a career, and married the love of my life with a kid on the way. Are you looking for a game that runs well, has depth of gameplay and inspired sound design? Look elsewhere. Do you want a game that harkens back to sites like themetalbox and runescape, runs like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and will kill you instantly, not by design but just because games hadn't learned those lessons yet? Look no further.

A clever puzzle platformer with a fun art style and challenging levels. controls can be tricky but the game genuinely engages and brings lots of laughs perfect for puzzle fans.