The Desolate Room

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 3:17

"The Desolate Room" is a RPG about...

...to be honest I have no idea where this game is going yet. What I can tell you is that it is about robots. You play a little robot (kind of a coffee machine) that is stranded on an island and have to find out things about the past.

As I said before, I can't tell you much about this game yet, but what I can tell you is that "The Desolate Room" is one of the most amazing piece of independent gaming that I played for a very long time. So please try it and see yourself why I am so amazed...

But if you don't believe me and haven't downloaded this game yet, here are some more informations from the developer:

"On a remote desert island, a small robot named Coffee is slowing discovering the details about something strange that took place there more than a century ago. There are broken robots here and there, as well as a mysterious signal coming from under the ground. Coffee has befriended these old broken parts, and is determined to uncover the mystery of a strange virus that seems to have killed them those many years ago. After finding a working console station that can access and replay their memory chips, Coffee wonders if maybe it isn't too late to save them.
...
On the island:
On the island, you will navigate "coffee" around the small island of debris and rocks. There are small quests to do to progress the story, as well as collect eggs in between console missions. Collecting eggs will give you battle advantages as well as bonus tokens for upgrading attacks. The more eggs you find, the higher your egg collecting skill. The higher your skill, the better types of eggs you can find. Charge eggs will give you a better charge advantage at the start of the next battle. Speed eggs will give you a better speed advantage at the start of the next fight. Bonus eggs will give you bonus tokens.

In the console:
While in the console you will control a blue avatar and navigate him through a virtual maze to the next boss. There will be two types of enemies along the way. Green enemies can simply be detroyed by shooting them (hold mouse click). Touching these will take away one life bar, but nothing more. Lose all of your life, and you begin at the start of that console area. The other type of enemies are red enemies. Normal red enemies can also be killed by shooting them in the console, but if they touch you, you will be drawn into the virtual arena to fight a larger version. Large red enemies cannot be shot with your avatars weapon, they can only be killed by touching them, then defeating them in a virtual arena battle.

There are different types of power-ups that normal enemies can drop while in the console. Large red pellets give you an additional life container. Small red pellets fill a life container. Green and yellow pellets both give you a better advantage in your next virtual arena fight. Green pellets give your party an additional charge point at the start of battle. Yellow pellets give your party an additional speed advantage at the start of the battle. If you enter a battle with both your charge and speed bonus bars full, all four of your characters will get an immediate turn at full charge. You can also always logoff the console using F12 to find eggs that will give you speed and charge bonuses as well.

Killing enemies in the console also awards you small token bonuses. They aren't much, but they can add up!

In battle:
When you are in battle, each of your four characters will have two meters. A charge meter, and a speed meter. When a characters speed meters is full, it is their turn in battle. The rate at which the speed meter fills can be changed during battle. The charge meter determines which attacks will be available to you when it is a characters turn. The charge meter goes up to ten, one charge point for each attack. Each character has ten unique attacks available. If a character has all ten charge points, all ten attacks will be available when it is that characters turn. Attacks farther down the list require more charge points to use. If you use the 3rd attack in the list, it will use 3 charge points from your meter. If you use the 10th attack, it will use 10 charge points. You may also use the "charge" button when it is a characters turn, this will give that character an additional 3-7 charge points for their next turn.

Enemies also have a speed bar and charge bar. There are also attacks that you can use to alter an enemies speed and charge.

After each battle, you will be awarded tokens. You will get token bonuses for the difficulty of the enemy, the variety of attacks you used (skill), and for combos you performed. A combo counts as any extra hits scored in one attack turn. You can use all of these tokens to upgrade any attack you like. In this game, you cannot level up your characters, only their attacks. However, the more attacks you level up for a specific character, the higher their hp will be. So every time a character has one of his attacks upgraded, they get a life upgrade as well."

Developer: Scottgames

Download: http://curlysworldoffreeware.com/viewtopic.php?t=1452

Official homepage: http://www.scottgames.com/

Download size: 57.4 MB

Year: 2007

Status: Freeware, but we'll have to send a mail to ask if we can host it...

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 0:24

I just finished "The Desolate Room" and I still think it's a great game. Sure there isn't much new to explore when you get further on in the game and fighting in the arena gets a bit repetitive. But I like the way the story is slowly developing and I admire the design and the soundtrack.

I think I'm going to donate some money for this one as I spent some quality hours with it. And the developer uses the game to collect money for building playgrounds for children in Afghanistan. And if you spent 10$ or more a character in his next game will be named after you (if you spent 50$ even a boss monster).

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 0:49

Hmmm, sounds like $50 well spent.

Post by **Chroelle** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 16:19

Well the money is going to charity, so that is always money well spent IMO.
I just tried out this game. Even though it has some weird things going on, this is nonetheless an intriguing aquaintance. The game has three different kinds of gameplay in it, and that helps its repetitive nature out. I will definently try this more. However I am afraid that when I exited my savegame was killed off, so I am awaiting opening it again until my mood is good enough to suffer defeat on that matter...

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 16:32

Normally the game is automatically saved every time you leave the console or quit the game. So you shouldn't be to worried about your savegame...

Post by **Chroelle** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 17:45

I tried it out and it is safe.

And there is only one problem with this game now...
The addictiveness. I have been playing it for wayyy too long now. But I will return to it of course.

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 21:27

The Desolate Room is available at CWF now. You can download it from our game info page:

http://curlysworldoffreeware.com/viewtopic.php?t=1452