Free Game Friday: Dubloon
Some of you may recall a little Tumblr called Game a Day, in which Overlord Ror would post, appropriately enough, a free indie game a day for your enjoyment. While it was an ambitious and fun project, playing and reviewing a game a day can be somewhat of a daunting task when we don’t all have the time we’d like to spend gaming each and every day.
In honor of Game a Day and the awesomeness contained therein, I bring you Free Game Friday, which is essentially the same thing, except it’s written by me and it’s not every day. But hopefully it’ll bring some sunshine to your life nonetheless, exposing you to some completely free and enjoyable indie titles to start off your weekend.
It should really come as no surprise to anyone that my first Free Game Friday focuses on a Game Maker game. The only thing more likely would have been an RPG Maker title, but in a lot of ways, this game would fit in just fine among its RPG Maker brethren, especially since most Game Maker titles I’ve played are not in fact RPGs.
Dubloon was a bit misleading to me at first, because as it is advertised as a “point and click pirate RPG adventure”, I somehow overlooked the “RPG” part and imagined it to be another point and click pirate adventure game, of which there is no shortage (not that I’m complaining, by any means). But because I am indeed a seasoned veteran of RPGs, I was not the least bit disappointed to find that Dubloon is in actuality a true blue role playing game, reminiscent in some ways of SNES favorite Earthbound, though it’s really its own animal altogether.
Dubloon puts you in the shoes of a silent pirate protagonist whose default name I do not know, because I named him Sam. Sam has found his way onto a Navy vessel and is making a valiant attempt to be all sorts of piratey and steal their beloved treasure. However, this plan rapidly goes a bit awry, and he finds himself in a pirate prison, from which he must escape with the help of a bomb-toting blonde bombshell, whom I named Elisabeth. Together, they must find themselves a ship so as to be proper pirates and sail the seas in search of the escaped Navy vessel’s secret treasure.
What makes this title unique among RPGs is that it relies very heavily on its point and click aspects, and you can in fact play the entire thing without a keyboard at all, though you can use the arrow keys or WASD keys to move if you’re more comfortable. To solve puzzles, you drag key items from your inventory onto the space on the ground where you would like to use them. Bombs, for example, can be placed over cracks in the wall and crumbling rocks to reveal new pathways and such, much like the Zelda games, although unlike Zelda, you don’t run out of bombs and you don’t have to clear the way so as not to get blown up in your bomb’s wake.
To this end, I found the game a bit simplistic. I would have liked to have had a number of bombs that I had to use sparingly, but perhaps this was merely me longing for that to which I’m more accustomed; it didn’t really deter from the overall enjoyment of the game. However, Dubloon starts out exceedingly simple, to the point where I almost wasn’t sure it would be worth playing at first, but I decided to persevere, which I consider a good life choice.
Walking into an inn early on, I expected things to proceed in the usual RPG way, with a canned bit of dialogue from the innkeeper before being given the option to stay at his establishment for a pittance. What I failed to take into consideration was that Sam and Elisabeth were pirates, and they would never be caught dead paying for their room and board. I derived an unusual bout of enjoyment from this.
As I said previously, the game relies heavily on its point and click interface, and combat is where this feature really shines. Some enemies, mostly bosses, will contain a special move that you must interact with in an attempt to null its effects on your party. This might be a cloud you must click on to make it dissipate before it reaches you, or a bunch of musical notes you must click away as they attempt to make quick work of you.
There are also combat items with similar functionality, requiring you to interact in order to make them most effective. The Shake Bomb has a meter that gradually fills up as you shake your cursor vigorously over it, and another meter indicating time left to power it up. When time runs out, your Shake Bomb does more damage to the enemies on screen the more you managed to shake it.
The enemies in Dubloon are often comical, such as the Hookhead, aptly named pirates with hooks for heads, and the ShockMole, which is really only amusing to me because it looks absolutely nothing whatsoever like a mole. I think it looks like a lizard.
My biggest gripe with this game is the lack of volume control for the music. The game has volume control for the sound effects, but they’re clunky at best, and it isn’t immediately obvious that there are no controls for the volume, only an on/off selection. Because the music was so blaring, I chose to play with it turned off, a choice I rarely make when I game, as I feel music adds to the overall ambiance and gameplay experience.
Volume aside, there are a few typographical errors here and there, but they’re quite easy to overlook for as entertaining as this game proves to be. I said it reminded me of Earthbound, and while it isn’t nearly as historic nor as clever, if you grew up with it or titles such as Super Mario RPG, Dubloon will likely bring a smile to your face and a pang of reminiscence to your heart. Remember when RPGs only needed clever dialogue and addicting gameplay to be amazing? Dubloon creator Banov is all too eager to remind us.
“Features a quest that takes 6-8 hours to complete with tons of extra content and gameplay reminiscent of great RPG classics like Chrono Trigger, Pokemon, and the Mario RPGs but with plenty of original twists.”
Dubloon has been a featured game over at YoYo Games, and it can either be downloaded or played from the browser with a plugin.
