The Stack

So! Replaying DROD: The City Beneath. This puts me in the new position of blogging a game that I’ve already blogged. Well, it’s been, good grief, ten years since those posts. My perspective will be different.

Coming on the heels of Journey to Rooted Hold, the most noticeable difference is that it isn’t simply a series of levels any more. JtRH played with nonlinearity a little, giving us up staircases and quests that looped back to previous levels, but the notion of “previous level” doesn’t even apply very well to TCB. Grouping rooms into levels is still important for the game’s organization, if only because of the “level clear” gates, but levels here are named, not numbered, and only partially ordered. I seem to recall that the later parts of the game turn into a linear descent like the previous titles, but for now, it’s hub-and-wheel, with some forking. And, while I recall once pooh-poohing the significance of the hub to the whole, it seems impressively large to me right now.

I had forgotten that the Negotiator from the beginning of JtRH shows up again here, in an expanded role. She turns out to be a bit of a rebel, in her own bureaucratically-bound way, and actually does a lot to help Beethro along, even though he doesn’t appreciate it. More importantly, you get to play as her for a little while, in an interlude between Beethro’s scenes, tutorializing the use of the Fegundo. Switching characters mid-game like this is a new feature for DROD.

And of course there are challenge scrolls now! As before, I’m trying to tackle all challenges as I find them. So far, I’ve found one worth describing briefly here. Recall that TCB contains occasional appearances by Slayer trainees, eager for promotion. In behavior, they’re just like the Slayer from JtRH, but they’re stupid enough to approach Beethro in rooms where they can be killed easily. The first such encounter is in a room full of “hot tiles”, which kill anything that steps on them and doesn’t step off on its next move. This makes killing the Slayer there not just easy, but nearly automatic. Once he gets close enough to be a threat, he’ll pause to reorient his weapon, and consequently die. So the Challenge there is: Keep the Slayer alive. So neat, so elegant.

Those hot tiles are just one of a bevy of new environmental features. I feel like the introduction of new stuff has accelerated. Yes, JtRH had new elements, but not this many, not this fast. And a fair number of them were new monsters, some of which were variations on stuff from King Dugan’s Dungeon, like Rattlesnakes and Awakened Mud. Whereas TCB is focusing less on new monsters and more on new room features that let you interact in new ways. Consider mirrors. These are things capable of reflecting the gaze of an Evil Eye (or, later, an Aumtlich), and which Beethro can push around the floor to block passageways or weigh down pressure plates (themselves a new element). They’re a bit Sokoban-like, except that Beethro can use his sword to push them around corners. The point is, the previous two games didn’t have anything remotely like them. I feel like JtRH was basically about fulfilling the potential that the familiar DROD ruleset obviously had but didn’t quite live up to in KDD, while TCB is more about striking off into fresh territory, and discovering new potential in the unfamiliar.