Grotesque Tactics II: Dungeons & Donuts Preview

FirstDropShow has put together a preview for Silent Dreams’ sequel to Grotesque Tactics, whose subtitle, Dungeons & Donuts, should give a hint of the tone of. Here’s a sampling:

The preview build started off in a hospital where we’re introduced to the main character Drake. There’s a killing fog consuming the area devouring elves and humans alike and of course evil creatures lurking in the underworld. Drake, as you can see is highly fashionable with his attire dawning a wardrobe fit for a depressed goth (it’s made fun of in the game) and of course bears the burden of saving the world from everything. While you’re in the hospital you meet Holy Avatar, an (attractive) fellow who talks about himself highly in third-person and is followed by his loyal maiden guild members. He offers you to join his guild and set out into the underworld but first you must give him a gift to give to the elves who might think it’s the humans fault for the killing fog.

You move using the WASD keys or holding down one of the mouse buttons. However, all of your actions are mostly performed with your mouse anyways so it’s much better just using the mouse. Once you set out on your quest to find a gift inside the hospital you’ll find that it’s kind of cumbersome grabbing loot. There is a faint gold glow around items that can be looted but it’s too faint. Infact if it wasn’t for the (loot) action in the GUI I probably wouldn’t have found the scissors I needed to cut off the dead elf’s fingers from a giftable elven shield. What really made me use a mouse-only control scheme was the fact that all of the actions mapped onto the keyboard were using numbers. This although configurable felt crammed even when using the numpad and WASD movement.

Proceeding past recovering the shield with attached fingers and talking to some of the NPCs in the vacinity you come across the best aspects of the game. The script. It’s simply hilarious even when it wasn’t voiced. You have pokemon references and tounge-in-cheek parodies of stereotypical RPG characters. It’s definitely something to look forward to in the full game. The dialogue choices ,although vague, do lead to some LOL-worthy dialogue from both Drake and the characters you’re talking to.