Get the ROM here! Overview Drymouth is a puzzle game. What you do is follow the numbers above and to the left of the field to see which blocks you should punch out. When all the blocks are correctly punched out, the pattern will form a picture. Oh, doesn't this sound neat? Yeah, it gets better. If you make mistakes, or a slime eats you, or whatever, you will lose time and eventually lose. But no! It doesn't have to be like that! you can eventually win if you're good! yes! Drymouth! A. Character Window. Each of the characters in Drymouth were meticulously hand drawn, requiring hundreds of individual frames and billions upon billions of man hours to create smooth animation. They react according to how you are doing in the game (happy, hurt, sad, dead, etc). B. Timer. The game is played against a clock. By default the clock runs out in under a minute. However, every time you punch a correct brick, more time is added. On the other hand, every time you try to punch a wrong brick, time is subtracted. C. Field Numbers. Being able to read these will show you which bricks are OK to punch. The numbers represent how many punchable bricks are in that row (or column). for example, seeing a 5 in this puzzle would mean five bricks in that row are punchable. D. Background. Each level has its own background and matching color scheme. E. Gem Counter. When you punch a correct block, sometimes a gem will pop out. This thing here will keep track of how many gems you've collected. If you collect 20 gems, a peice of the ebb tablet is recovered, the gem color changes, and this starts over at 0. F. Items. Items pop out of the field the same way gems do. You can carry up to three items at a time. Items are only usable once - once they're gone it's up to the player to find more. Each character has his own set of items. G. Game Field. This is where the game is played. Bricks that are not yet punched have the lighter orange hue to them, bricks that have already been punched are the darker brown, and hilighted bricks are always red. Right now there's an item on the screen, and the cursor is that little yellow thing there. Drymouth is a gbc only game, 8mb in size, rumble pack ready, aimed at the 9-14 age bracket. Gameplay (For everything you need to know on how to play Drymouth, see the in-game tutorial "asobikata" accessable from the title menu of the game.) Prototype Box & Flier Level Mechanics Drymouth's puzzles come in four sizes. The further you advance in the game, the bigger the puzzles will get. However, the above screens are merely concept shots; at most the Gameboy's resolution allows for a field of 13x13 blocks. So, on the 15x15 and 20x20 fields, The field will scroll to let you get to it all. The screen doesn't actually scroll or anything; calculations are done within the game, new rows are brought up, and with the next refresh the new rows are displayed and a new section of the background appears or disappears, giving the illusion that something's moved. Demiforce was presented with this challenge and came up with two solutions for the scrolling, both of which are usable in the game. On any scrollable level (6 or above), use the A or B buttons to choose the scrolling type that suits you best. Scrolling Type A       Scrolling Type A is what I call "Static Scrolling". What happens here is that when a certain point is passed on the field, it will scroll by loading in a bunch of new blocks. The level background will be visible if the current part of the field is near an eastern or southern boundary. For 15x15-sized fields, the last five blocks will be shown upon scroll. For 20x20 sized fields, the last eight blocks will be shown upon scroll. The score is repositioned when a vertical static scroll takes place. Scrolling Type B Scrolling Type B is a dynamic scroller. It scrolls a little bit at a time, more often than a static scroller. When a certain point is passed on the field, the blocks will shift over one by one until you get to the end of the field. This is the default scrolling method. Characters Blitz Type: Robot Pick: Screw Blitz came to the competition in hopes of reuniting the ebb to save his cherished "Disnesquick". Blitz is harder to play than the other two, due to his high speed. However, he has access to the most items of any of the three, making up for the difficulty. Usable Items: Billy Type: Human Pick: Gun Billy gave up a life of shaolin martial arts to compete in Drymouth. His unique perserverance gives him special abilities noone else has. He can also touch his tongue to his nose. Billy is the intermediate player, with the game at a moderate speed. His stock of items is different than the others, centering around peace of mind. Usable Items: Fat Chops Type: Some alien thing Pick: Bubble You probably don't realise it, but fatty chops is really the mang. He just acts like that to get chicks. Fatty's the easiest to play. His game is set at a nice easy pace, but he's unluckier than anybody else when it comes to getting items and gems. Usable Items: ? Type: ? Pick: ? Noone knows much about the secret character. He supposedly makes appearances here and there in the game, and is triggered by a special event. The secret character is the hardest to play as the game goes very fast and enemies are very fierce. Usable Items: Although the difficulty may seem far too unreasonable to choose any of the harder players, it is in fact balanced out. The true object of the game is to get the good ending, which happens if you can collect 100 gems. Fatty will be the easiest to complete the game with, but because of his low gem turnout rate, he'll actually be the hardest to get the good ending with. on the other hand, if you are good enough to win with blitz, you will most likely get the good ending due to his high turnout of gems. Additionally, the balance is attained through a contrast of gameplay speed versus item availability. Easy characters like Fatty and Billy have slower timers than Blitz or the secret character, but won't have access as many items as the harder players. It comes down to this: any of the characters will have an equal chance of finishing the game. Choosing a character is based on your personal playing style. Items Items will pop out from time to time when bricks are punched correctly. The player is then required to move the cursor over the item in order to get it. As long as the player isn't already holding three items, the item will move down into the item slot in the lower left area of the screen. A player can hold up to three items. An item is activated by pressing select. When this happens, the item will be activated, and all remaining items (if any) will be bumped up one slot. The player can choose which slot to use an item from by pressing left or right when in the pause screen. BOMB When used, every block within a 2 block radius will be exploded, showing its true nature. Any enemy within the bomb's radius at the time of blast will be killed. CROSS When used, every block that's in the cursor's row or column will be exploded. Any enemy within the blast will be killed. YIN-YANG This item will automatically return the player to beginning of the level currently being played. Points, Gems, and Items will all be returned to the amount before starting the level. X-RAY This will let the player see what's under a 3x3 circle radius of blocks, but not actually punch anything. This 3x3 radius always encircle the player's pick, no matter where it travels, but will only last a couple seconds. The player will be prohobited from punching any blocks during this five second time, so it's up to you to remember which blocks can be punched out. HOURGLASS This item will automatically add a couple seconds of time to the meter. GEM This will give you 10 gems. If the gem count exceeded 9, an ebb chunk will be given and the game will return with 0 gems. SHIELD The shield protects you from mistakes. When activated, a blue shield icon will appear in the upper left area of the screen. If you punch a wrong brick or get zapped by an enemy, a bit of the shield will disappear. After the fourth time, the shield will be completely gone and the timer will decrement with damage once again. MINES The player will have about 10 seconds to lay down mines, one after another. these mines will sit on the screen and then explode, destroying a 1 block radius around each. You can lay many mines, but the blast is smaller than the bomb's. Any enemy within the blasts will be killed. BONUS WARP This will take you to the bonus round and back. STAR All enemies will tremble and explode, causing a 3 block radius around each to be destroyed. Once used, no more enemies will appear on that level. TNT Like the bomb but cooler. http://demiforce.parodius.com/ This has been a Demiforce product, (c) 1999 / 2000. All yaya reserved. (614) 594-6952       email: demi@parodius.com