Soldak Entertainment let us know that they have a sale, on Steam at the moment for Din's Curse and its expansion Demon War, which are both 75% off.

Thanks to Steven Peeler of Soldak Entertainment for providing them and Couchpotato for arranging them, we can give you another set of keys, which this time is for Din's Curse:

Din's Curse is an action RPG with multiplayer, 141 class combinations, real consequences, and a dynamic world.

Din, champion of the gods, has cursed you into a second life of service because you selfishly squandered your first one while causing misfortune to those around you. Travel the plains of Aleria and save desperate towns from the brink of annihilation. Until you're redeemed, you're doomed to wander the earth alone for all eternity.

Now time for the rules.

1. New registrations are not eligible to win.
2. You must have over 30 posts on the Forum.
3. Just post a comment you are interested in winning the game.

We will randomly pick the winners on Monday, May 18th.

Hey everyone! In this video I take a look at the hack n' slash action-RPG, Din's Curse! I give an overview of the gameplay elements and go over what to expect when you play the game. 

Hello! Thank you for joining me for today's video. In this episode, I take a look at the indie, hack n' slash action-RPG by Soldak Entertainment, Din's Curse!

During this video I show off and talk about the various aspects that make up the game, from the hacking and slashing of monsters to the inventory system and the character stats and skills. No stone is left unturned! :)

I hope you enjoy the video! If you do, please press the Like button, leave me a comment letting me know what you think, subscribe to my channel for more RPG videos and share this video everywhere you go!

If you'd like to really help me out, please check out my Patreon page! - http://www.patreon.com/fluent

More links:

Din's Curse on Steam - http://store.steampowered.com/app/217...

Din's Curse Demon War DLC on Steam -
http://store.steampowered.com/app/217...

Soldak Entertainment's website - http://www.soldak.com/

RPGWatch - http://www.rpgwatch.com

Thanks for watching and much love to you all! Ciao!

So, what do you think of this game? 

Soldak Entertainment announced their ARPG Din's Curse is now available on Linux.

Din's Curse now available on Linux!

Dallas, Texas, April 3, 2014 - Soldak Entertainment today announced the availability of the action RPG, Din's Curse, for Linux.

Din's Curse is a single player and co-op multiplayer action RPG with 141 class combinations, infinite number of dynamically generated towns, real consequences, and a dynamic, evolving world.

Din's Curse can be purchased at:
http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Buy.html

Or try the demo at:
http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Demo.html

Din, champion of the gods, has cursed you into a second life of service because you selfishly squandered your first one while causing misfortune to those around you. To redeem yourself, you must impress Din by building a reputation for helping others. Travel the spacious western plains of Aleria and save desperate towns from the brink of annihilation. Until you're redeemed, you're doomed to wander the earth alone for all eternity.

In Din's Curse, you will explore an extensive underground, slaying dangerous monsters, solving dynamic quests, dodging deadly traps, and in your spare time, plundering loot. Quell uprisings, flush out traitors, kill assassins, cure plagues, purge curses, end wars, and complete other dangerous quests or the danger WILL escalate. Not all is as it seems though, traitors will gladly stab you in the back, renegades can revolt against the town, spies can set up ambushes, and items might even curse or possess your friends.

Choose one of 141 class combinations and journey to an infinite number of dynamically generated towns with vastly different problems. Every game is a surprise! Your actions have real consequences in this dynamic, evolving world. Your choices actually matter! Open the door to Din's Curse. Surprising adventures await!

Soldak Entertainment sent a press release with infomation about a new Linux demo for Din's Curse that you can download, and try for free.

Din's Curse demo for Linux!

Dallas, Texas, March 19, 2014 - Soldak Entertainment today announced the availability of the Din's Curse demo for Linux!

Din, champion of the gods, has cursed you into a second life of service because you selfishly squandered your first one while causing misfortune to those around you. To redeem yourself, you must impress Din by building a reputation for helping others. Travel the spacious western plains of Aleria and save desperate towns from the brink of annihilation. Until you're redeemed, you're doomed to wander the earth alone for all eternity.

In Din's Curse, you will explore an extensive underground, slaying dangerous monsters, solving dynamic quests, dodging deadly traps, and in your spare time, plundering loot. Quell uprisings, flush out traitors, kill assassins, cure plagues, purge curses, end wars, and complete other dangerous quests or the danger WILL escalate. Not all is as it seems though, traitors will gladly stab you in the back, renegades can revolt against the town, spies can set up ambushes, and items might even curse or possess your friends.

Choose one of 141 class combinations and journey to an infinite number of dynamically generated towns with vastly different problems. Every game is a surprise! Your actions have real consequences in this dynamic, evolving world. Your choices actually matter!

Open the door to Din's Curse. Surprising adventures await!

Features:

Uniquely created worlds for every game, with different monsters, items, quests, and even townspeople, give the player a new experience every time Explore a dynamic, evolving, living world Many hybrid classes to experience - 6 full classes, 18 specialties, 141 total combinations Your choices truly impact the game Surprising, emergent gameplay Co-op multiplayer to adventure with friends (only in full game)

The demo for Din's Curse demo is only around 105MB, so there’s no reason not to give it a try. The demo can be downloaded from:http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Demo.html

Soldak Entertainment sent us news with information about a patch for Din's Curse.

Din's Curse patch 1.029 is now available at http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Patches.html

Changes can be seen at http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Patches/Changes.html

Since the last official patch, the patch improves networking, optimizes a bunch of things, fixes a few memory leaks, and fixes a bunch of other small issues.

A review for this game has been written on Gaming Illustrated. They gave the game an
88% score and here's the reason:

While the game made me quite nostalgic for the old Diablo games, I thoroughly enjoyed the living world dynamic. Instead of slaving away forever underground, it posed a unique challenge to be dashing back and forth fairly often. The addition of different modes to mix up the challenges faced by the player, rather than just ramping up the difficulty was made for a decent spin on an otherwise old mechanic. Randomly generated dungeons also help to prevent the game from feeling like a grind.

Din's Curse from Soldak Entertainment has been released at Steam. The price is US dollars 9,99 and 8,99 for the first week. The game can be found here.

A quote from the description:

In Din's Curse, you will explore an extensive underground, slaying dangerous monsters, solving dynamic quests, dodging deadly traps, and in your spare time, plundering loot. Quell uprisings, flush out traitors, kill assassins, cure plagues, purge curses, end wars, and complete other dangerous quests or the danger WILL escalate. Not all is as it seems though, traitors will gladly stab you in the back, renegades can revolt against the town, spies can set up ambushes, and items might even curse or possess your friends.

GamingOgre has reviewed Din's Curse, with a score of 80%. A snip on multiplayer:

As I touched on before, each class gets three skills sets, and each of these have different types of armor and weapons that you can equip, as well as unique properties like increased mana, and both active and passive skills that you can level up if you have the right amount of skill points. Din’s Curse also manages to pack in multiplayer. This allows players to play cooperatively on a server hosted by one of the players. This plays out in a very similar way to the single player side of things with quests and experience being shared among the players.

Soldak sends word of a new Din's Curse review at GamerCast with a score of 4/5:

The true buzz word for Dins Curse is dynamic, but it is all true, you won’t find one scripted event in the game unlike Diablo, Magicka, Torchlight, you name it, unless it is procedurally generated there is no dungeon crawler that rivals the dynamism of Dins Curse, you will literally be on your toes throughout the game, you never know what to expect which is what makes the game all the more engaging.

GameBanshee has kicked up a review of Soldak's Din's Curse + Demon War expansion. The author didn't really enjoy and doesn't really seem to have connected with the main selling point of dynamic events:

The quests also leave me wanting a bit more.  On the plus side, they're all in real-time, so if you're alerted that some townspeople are starving, then they won't just wait patiently for you to show up.  If you take too long then they might die or leave, and you'll have fewer NPCs in your town.  Similarly, the longer you take to save a town the more powerful the bosses in the dungeon become, and the more machines of war they make (including anti-magic devices, which spawn random anti-magic zones for you to dodge).  But on the down side, the quests are pretty trivial.  Almost every one uses the format "Go to level X and kill Y or destroy Z or find A copies of B," and you just repeat them over and over again.  Demon War helps with this a little, but it doesn't take long to see each quest multiple times.

Soldak has kicked up a quick v1.012 patch to address some balance and bug issues with the Demon War expansion.  Apparently all patches from here on will cover both the main game and the expansion.  Patch notes here.

In Soldak's own words, "this is a pretty big patch that fixes a lot of things and adds a bunch of little features".  Notes here and patch file here.  This is the minimum version to run the upcoming expansion, by the way.

Din's Curse has officially advanced to v1.010, which is described as minor balances and fixes.

Din's Curse has a beta v1.010 patch for those looking for some balance changes.

There's a mixed review of Din's Curse at Inside Mac Games, with a score of 6/10:

Overall, the game play is good. It is challenging and the levels of complexity will appeal to players who like to really dig into a game’s development system. Din’s Curse would appeal more to hard core RPGers then to casual players. I personally feel that the lower level of graphics, and the complexity of the gaming system detract from the total fun factor of this game. If you have the time to dig into the game’s system, Din’s Curse can be a lot of fun and will keep you busy for a good long time. Definitely worth a look, especially for hard core RPGers.

Soldak sent through some updates on Din's Curse, including a price drop and updated demo:

Today we dropped the price of Din's Curse down to $19.99 - http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Buy.html

We also released version 1.008 of the demo. Not only does the demo have the latest and greatest changes, we also increased the level limit to 6 so players can get a better feeling for the game. You can grab the Windows or Mac demo from http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Demo.html

The last update acutally happened last month, but we were kind of quiet about it. Now each purchase of Din's Curse, directly from us, gives access to both the Windows AND Mac versions.

Soldak has released a v1.008 beta patch for Din's Curse.  As usual the patch notes are too long to post here but can be read on the changes page.

Din's Curse v1.007 has left beta status and is now official.  Word is "this patch improves a bunch of effects, improves unique items, added some new options like Hide Crappy Items, Don't Click on Pets, and Very Slow Pace, and fixed/balanced/polished several things".

Soldak continues to work hard on Din's Curse with a new beta patch adding polish.  This one improves some of the effects and graphics, some UI tweaks, added a Very Slow option and a bunch more fixes and tweaks.

Soldak has kicked up a small v1.006 beta patch for Din's Curse.  The notes might also confirm the expansion that Stephen Peeler has mentioned in passing:

• moved combustion2.tga & blueRing01.tga from expansion to base game (Archon)
• added a note in the manual about AppData being hidden by default (Hagaar)
• now use smaller font for mouse wheel function & keyboard layout so text fits (Ghoulgoat)
• added command to test all effects for missing textures
• fixed priest skill hit effect
• fixed a couple more effects

Soldak continues to work feverishly on Din's Curse with a large-ish v1.005 beta patch now available.  Among the various fixes and changes suggested by the community are...

• more UI tweaks
• lots of effects improvements
• some ground and environment texture improvements

The 1.04 patch for Soldak's game, Din's Curse is now officially released. To celebrate this, they released screenshots that show the updated and improved UI of the game. The changelog:

• fixed a texture animation issue when have 2 textures
• added some more info when ChangeDisplaySettings fails
• logfile now defaults to on
• fixed some of the war against town text (fab)
• fixed highlighting minimap dots in perspective view mode (Roswitha)
• fixed scroll bars on world map (Caal)
• drop down for languages no longer will pick up English twice if zipped and loose files
• fixed changing a graphics option that resets the graphics, forgets the current gamma setting
• no longer turn towards clicked on enemies when dead (Roswitha)
• added alpha to teleport stone icon (Godot)
• moved view variables into user vars
• now monsters with quests are not solid so they don't trap you places (kaeldragor)
• a little bit more UI improvement
• improved a few effects

A German language mod for Din's Curse is now available, provided by detlev who also translated their previous games.  You can grab it from the Din's Curse mod page.

Soldak sent us this PR about the updated v1.004 demo for Din's Curse.  The latest version adds some graphical and UI improvements and is worth a look:

We released version 1.004 of the Din's Curse demo (Windows and Mac) today at:
http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Demo.html

The major changes for this version of the demo are a new perspective view, a better shadows option, and improved UI graphics.


Din's Curse is a single player and co-op multiplayer action RPG with 141 class combinations, infinite number of dynamically generated towns, real consequences, and a dynamic, evolving world.

Din, champion of the gods, has cursed you into a second life of service because you selfishly squandered your first one while causing misfortune to those around you. To redeem yourself, you must impress Din by building a reputation for helping others. Travel the spacious western plains of Aleria and save desperate towns from the brink of annihilation. Until you're redeemed, you're doomed to wander the earth alone for all eternity.

In Din's Curse, you will explore an extensive underground, slaying dangerous monsters, solving dynamic quests, dodging deadly traps, and in your spare time, plundering loot. Quell uprisings, flush out traitors, kill assassins, cure plagues, purge curses, end wars, and complete other dangerous quests or the danger WILL escalate. Not all is as it seems though, traitors will gladly stab you in the back, renegades can revolt against the town, spies can set up ambushes, and items might even curse or possess your friends.

Choose one of 141 class combinations and journey to an infinite number of dynamically generated towns with vastly different problems. Every game is a surprise! Your actions have real consequences in this dynamic, evolving world. Your choices actually matter!

Open the door to Din's Curse. Surprising adventures await!

A new beta 1.004 patch for Din's Curse is out, hot on the heels of the last patch.

Strategy reviewer Troy Goodfellow has reviewed Din's Curse for GameShark, calling it "one of my favourite games from 2010".  The score is 'B+' and here's a snip:

The monsters fight each other, too, which is a great way of winnowing the hordes except for the fact that monsters can gain experience and status, too. A normal zombie is really no big deal; if he fights his way to champion zombie, though—watch out. Occasionally you will be asked to find a townsperson in the depths of peril, and saving them from death is no easy task.

The dungeons then become sort of a chaotic mash-up of wilderness and gladiatorial free for all where you can get overwhelmed, especially at lower levels. The monsters are rarely in high enough numbers or levels to pose a threat to an experienced hero, especially once you've unlocked some of the bigger feats and talents (fireballs, poison clouds, multiple target melee fighting) but it can be touch and go sometimes if you get stuck in a corner, low on healing potions.

Soldak sends word they have released the official v1.002 patch for Din's Curse, as well as a beta v1.003.  Grab the files here and read the notes here.

Sorcerer's Place has made a review 7/10 for Din's Curse. Here's a bit about why this game is different:

So, what makes the game different? To me, the main ingredient is the dynamic world aspect of it. Time doesn't stand still for you. You cannot accept a quest and take your sweet time doing it. For example, if you need to stop Baddie X from building an earthquake machine and you don't hop to it, then Baddie X builds his earthquake machine and bad things happen to you and the town. If you have to escort an NPC from level 3 to 5 of the dungeon (why you would need to do this, I don't know, but I was given that quest, so I know it's true), and you dawdle on your way to finding that NPC, they may go and do it themselves. Certain vendors come and go from the towns (although you can't do that yourself, until you save or lose the town.

7/10 is the score for Din's Curse over at Sorcerer's Place:

Which takes us to another interesting aspect. The goal is to save the town and accumulate reputation. If you waste too much time clearing levels, gathering loot, and exploring, you can lose the town. So, you must restrain your tendencies to explore every nook and cranny and gather every last copper piece and bent knife and focus on the goals. Din doesn't care how rich you are and what a great rig you are rocking; he wants you to save towns and be a proper gofer for all the NPCs around. If that's not your thing, you should think twice about trying this game, because Din's Curse is not about exploring large areas and clear-cutting the forest of bad guys. It's about doing quests, getting reputation, and saving towns.

It changes the rules on you mid-stream, and the monsters can use the same features of the dungeons that you use (levers to trip explosions work equally well for and against you). It's refreshing in a way, but also maddening, as there is no real guaranty that you can actually save any particular town. If it spawns with a bunch of problems and powerful bad guys, you are out of luck. While you can control the relative level of the spawn before it happens, that doesn't mean that you are going to guarantee yourself an easy (or even fair) time of it.

Din's Curse has been reviewed over at Computergames.ro for a score of 80%:

The word „random” defines this game: all kind of loot showers on the player, the cities are randomly generated, so are the underground levels, with the number of caverns usually varying between nine, 11 or 13, depending on your luck. You get the main quests from Din and three other NPCs who’s survival is crucial to saving the town. From this point of view, a big plus (or a big pain in the butt, depends on taste) is the dynamic world. Because the events in Aleria don’t stop just because you went to town to sell stuff or refill your stock of life potions.

On the contrary, you can fail a mission in level 5 because you never got to save a NPC, while at level 8 there’s a rebellion going on. Or the opposite, you are cleaning up level 3 and suddenly realize that the town is under attack by Bloodsavage level 10 and you have to go back quickly, otherwise everything is lost. Also, different NPCs come and go into town, so you might stumble upon a vendor in some underground corner. Various missions can come along without actually accepting them, like saving an NPC from a horde of zombies or killing an unexpected boss. Since the maximum number of quests that you can undertake simultaneously is only six, this approach helps a lot with the flow of the gameplay and to gain more reputation.

There's a new v1.002 demo for Din's Curse, if you haven't checked it out previously.  A summary as a reminder:

Din's Curse is a single player and co-op multiplayer action RPG with 141 class combinations, infinite number of dynamically generated towns, real consequences, and a dynamic, evolving world. 

In the Din's Curse demo, you can get a taste of the dynamic and ever changing world. There is no time limit but it does limit everything to around level 5. The demos are about 100MB.  You can see the minimum and recommended System Specs here.

Soldak's indie action/RPG Din's Curse has been reviewed at gameSlave, with a score of 7.5/10:

Din's Curse is a nice, simple, back-to-basics dungeon stomper that will keep you coming back for more. Though the plot is a little dull, and the action can be repetitive, it's the ideal stress buster after work, and is even more fun when you drag a friend along for the ride. The graphics, while nothing groundbreaking, are adequate for the job, and the variety in missions and monsters will keep you guessing, as well as on constant alert for an invasion, plague or assassin attack in the city above, as you fight your way towards redemption and the end of Din's Curse.

IndieRPGs.com has a review of Din's Curse, with a score of 4/5.  Here's a quick sample:

In short, Din’s Curse is constantly changing as you play, whether you’re taking advantage of the changes or not. Just about every new thing that appears in the world appears with a hidden timer. NPCs that visit will leave town again after a certain amount of time. Take too long to beat that quest you picked up, and you will fail it. Take too long acting on a set of plans you discover, and the scheming monster will succeed, making your life a lot harder. The game starts out fairly hectic, and only gets more frenzied as you progress. You’ve been warned.

Soldak has officially released the v1.001 patch for Din's Curse, and also a beta v1.002 at the same time.  Files here, patch notes here.

Tom Chick has reviewed Din's Curse at his Fidgit blog in a highly positive article:

The artwork in Din's Curse, like the previous Soldak games, has that rough-hewn quality of an indie title getting by on the essentials, but it works well enough to let the gameplay get its hooks into you. This game isn't as simple as Kivi's Underworld, but it lacks Depth of Peril's the strategic layer of battling clans raiding each other's clubhouses. Which seems a pity, really. That mechanic gave Depths of Peril its own sense of character, adding competition and urgency to the normally laidback pursuit of hacking-and-slashing through dungeons at your leisure.

But as you play Din's Curse, which moves you from town to town, each with a randomly generated dungeon tucked undernearth, you'll discover that Soldak has taken that competition and urgency and buried it in the dungeons. As with any good action RPG, you push deeper and deeper into these dungeons. But these dungeons push back.

Soldak has released the Software Development Kit for Din's Curse, so head over to start making mods for Soldak's hack'n'slasher.

Soldak sent in news of two Din's Curse reviews.  First, Bytten with a huge score of 94%:

The playability for Din's Curse is pitched very well. Even a basic Level 1 character can head straight into the dungeon and start hacking the enemy to pieces, and it really doesn't matter what you equip them with at first. As you level up, the monsters get nastier; the lower levels of the dungeon can also be dangerous and a powerful boss monster can kill your character quite easily. It pays to keep an eye out for better armour, better weapons and so on. While this may sound like a cautious approach is best, the dynamic plot development actually makes this a good way to lose - you'll die less often, but by the time you get to the boss monster he'll have set up three altars, started four uprisings and ransacked the town. He who hesitates is indeed lost. Death is not permanent for your character - if you die, you respawn back in town with an experience debt to make up. If the town is lost, you can simply start a new one. There are options to make new worlds easier or harder to suit your tastes, and masochistic players after a real challenge can even make death permanent, or have monsters start several levels higher than their own character.

Second, the Adrenaline Vault says 4/5:

After a long, hard day at work, it’s cathartic to come home, load up a game such as Din’s Curse and blast away at orcs and fire-tossing goblins for a few hours. Its combination of old-school RPG gameplay with a quick pace and combat that’s focused on more than just the dungeons give it the uniqueness it needs to stand out in the crowded dungeon-crawler genre. At $24.99 it’s a little pricier than most download-only indie games, but for that you get infinite replayability and a money-back guarantee, so it’s hard to go wrong. It’s a “just one more level” time-suck that’ll have you playing much longer than you intended.

Here's a fun idea.  Soldak has kicked off a Din's Curse mini-tournament; the idea is that Soldak has released a specific character file and players have to use that character and achieve the highest character level they can.  It's not a truly level playing field because of the random events in Din's Curse but it still sounds like like a bit of fun.  Details in this thread.

Several Din's Curse items lobbed into the inbox, so I'll group them here. Let's start with an interview over at The Rampant Coyote, which discusses Steven Peeler's background, Din's Curse and what might be next for Soldak Entertainment:

Rampant Coyote: You’ve incorporated a lot of roguelike elements into Din’s Curse. Can you tell me more about them?

Steven Peeler: Actually the funny thing is I really haven’t purposely pulled many ideas from roguelikes. Diablo took the idea of rogue, added nice graphics, and simplified it a lot. Din starts with a Diablo action RPG concept and adds a lot more depth. So it’s not too surprising that we overlap roguelikes quite a bit.

Some of the things we have in common are a hardcore mode, lots of environmental interaction, and special rooms. Hardcore (also know as permadeath) is only an option, but it’s there for those that like that tense, danger feeling. There are tons of objects to interact with in the environment like traps, dangerous liquids like magma and oil, support beams that are holding up the ceiling, obelisks that can give you cool temporary boosts, and many more cool things. Beware many monsters can also use the environment to their advantage! As for special rooms, we have things like vaults, lairs, and treasure rooms which are very similar to some roguelikes.

There's also an interview at Random Tower.

Ausgamers has a review, with a score of 7.7/10.  It's a bit hard to pull a good quote from this one but here we go:

The loot system is extensive, with item rarity, dual weapon wielding, sets of legendary equipment, cursed and egotistical articles. There is also a system of pouches for storing items, and chests for storing personal items, as well as items for other characters you have on the go. So if your Priest finds a wizbang double handed sword that he can’t use, store it in the town chest for next time you play with the Warrior you are developing.

Finally, the official site has some new monster profiles on offer.

Soldak has kicked up a beta v1.001 patch for Din's Curse. Files here, lengthy patch notes here.

Soldak points out a couple of Din's Curse reviews we haven't covered so far.  First, co-op site Co-optimus scores 4/5:

The co-op play works exactly as you would expect. Invite as many friends as you want to your game and go slaughter some kobolds. Reread that last sentence. There's no hard-limit to number of players in a co-op session. Players can initiate trades or revert the time-honored tradition of littering the town square with all the loot they don't want. The choice is yours! All quests and experience points are shared by the players, so if someone decides to head back to town, they can take care of turning in quests for the rest of their friends.

Players can connect to each other in a variety of ways: via broadcasting a server over the internet, over a LAN or even good old direct IP connection. Oddly enough, in a reversal of fortune for the Co-Optimus editors, we had no trouble connecting to each other. Bonus points for stable netcode!

Gametactics awards a score of 7/10:

Quests in Din’s Curse range from typical fetch and kill quests to escort and delivery quests. A big thing in this game is that failing quests is a common occurrence and sometimes is very unfair. There have been times where I get a quest and I’ll enter the dungeon and less than a minute later I’d fail and there was no way I could travel down 2 levels in that time. Failing a quest isn’t the end of the world though, you can still save a town even if you fail half the quests which is a good thing. Sometimes even failing a quest doesn’t mean it’s over, if it’s a quest where you were supposed to interact with a NPC and he/she gets killed by a monster you can get a quest from their ghost to get revenge and kill the monster that killed them. NPCs that a player is supposed to meet in a quest can even turn on the player and try to kill them. Each quest completed gives the player more reputation and once it gets high enough then Din will lift the curse from the player. This game is one of the games that can almost never end and the player can keep going and leveling up their character or choose to start a new one.

Gamers Daily Network has a review of Din's Curse, with a score of 7/10:

In conclusion, if you are a fan of classic RPG’s and have the taste for adventure then you are going to get hours of great game play out this title it has loads of potential of new idea’s and a great story line to go with it best of all it can also be played in co-op mode making all those achievements you have gained in the solo world an awesome boasting point with friends and fellow players.

GameZone has reviewed Soldak's newest game, Din's Curse, and given it a score of 8/10. 
Here's a bit from the review:

One major feature of Din’s Curse is the randomization of the world. Whether you have access to a particular villager for a quest, or the layout of a specific dungeon area, is really dependent upon whatever random content the game generates. While possibly intimidating for genre newcomers, most players should not find this sufficient cause for panic.

Din's Curse is officially out of the Beta phase with this minor update. Here are the changes:

1.000
-----

* Official release
* removed beta stuff
* changed version to 1.000
* added beta testers to manual credits

Soldak has officially released Din's Curse, which you can grab from their site for $24.95:

Dallas, Texas, March 31, 2010 - Soldak Entertainment today announced the availability of the action RPG, Din's Curse, for Windows and Mac PCs.

Din's Curse is a single player and co-op multiplayer action RPG with 141 class combinations, infinite number of dynamically generated towns, real consequences, and a dynamic, evolving world.

Din's Curse can be purchased at:
http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Buy.html

Din, champion of the gods, has cursed you into a second life of service because you selfishly squandered your first one while causing misfortune to those around you. To redeem yourself, you must impress Din by building a reputation for helping others. Travel the spacious western plains of Aleria and save desperate towns from the brink of annihilation. Until you're redeemed, you're doomed to wander the earth alone for all eternity.

In Din's Curse, you will explore an extensive underground, slaying dangerous monsters, solving dynamic quests, dodging deadly traps, and in your spare time, plundering loot. Quell uprisings, flush out traitors, kill assassins, cure plagues, purge curses, end wars, and complete other dangerous quests or the danger WILL escalate. Not all is as it seems though, traitors will gladly stab you in the back, renegades can revolt against the town, spies can set up ambushes, and items might even curse or possess your friends.

Choose one of 141 class combinations and journey to an infinite number of dynamically generated towns with vastly different problems. Every game is a surprise! Your actions have real consequences in this dynamic, evolving world. Your choices actually matter!

Open the door to Din's Curse. Surprising adventures await!

Features:

Uniquely created worlds for every game, with different monsters, items, quests, and even townspeople, give the player a new experience every time
Explore a dynamic, evolving, living world
Many hybrid classes to experience - 6 full classes, 18 specialties, 141 total combinations
Your choices truly impact the game
Surprising, emergent gameplay
Co-op multiplayer to adventure with friends

You can go to http://www.soldak.com for more information about Din's Curse and Soldak Entertainment.

The Din's Curse beta patches keep rolling in, with 0.912 released.  Patch here, notes there.

Din's Curse continues to improve, with v0.911 released for beta players.

Soldak has released a public demo for Din's Curse, so if you've been following the beta newsbits but haven't wanted to slap your cash down sight-unseen, it's time to check it out.

Dallas, Texas, March 18, 2010 - Soldak Entertainment today announced the availability of the Din's Curse demo. Din's Curse is an action RPG for Windows and Mac PCs.

http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Demo.html

Din, champion of the gods, has cursed you into a second life of service because you selfishly squandered your first one while causing misfortune to those around you. To redeem yourself, you must impress Din by building a reputation for helping others. Travel the spacious western plains of Aleria and save desperate towns from the brink of annihilation. Until you're redeemed, you're doomed to wander the earth alone for all eternity.

In Din's Curse, you will explore an extensive underground, slaying dangerous monsters, solving dynamic quests, dodging deadly traps, and in your spare time, plundering loot. Quell uprisings, flush out traitors, kill assassins, cure plagues, purge curses, end wars, and complete other dangerous quests or the danger WILL escalate. Not all is as it seems though, traitors will gladly stab you in the back, renegades can revolt against the town, spies can set up ambushes, and items might even curse or possess your friends.

Choose one of 141 class combinations and journey to an infinite number of dynamically generated towns with vastly different problems. Every game is a surprise! Your actions have real consequences in this dynamic, evolving world. Your choices actually matter!

Open the door to Din's Curse. Surprising adventures await!

Features:

Uniquely created worlds for every game, with different monsters, items, quests, and even townspeople, give the player a new experience every time
Explore a dynamic, evolving, living world
Many hybrid classes to experience - 6 full classes, 18 specialties, 141 total combinations
Your choices truly impact the game
Surprising, emergent gameplay
Co-op multiplayer to adventure with friends (only in full game)

The demo for Din's Curse demo is only around 100MB, so there’s no reason not to give it a try. The demo can be downloaded from:
http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Demo.html

The demo is also available from the following mirrors:

WorthPlaying
Win - http://worthplaying.com/article/2010/3/18/news/73144/

FileShack
Win - http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/17677/Din%27s+Curse+Demo+-+Windows
Mac - http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/17678/Din%27s+Curse+Demo+-+Mac

AtomicGamer
Both - http://www.atomicgamer.com/games/5494/dins-curse/files#demos

Gamershell
Both - http://www.gamershell.com/news_92848.html

FanGaming
Win - http://www.fangaming.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=7713
Mac - http://www.fangaming.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=7714

FileFront
Win - http://www.filefront.com/15865195/Dins-Curse-Windows-Playable-Demo/
Mac - http://www.filefront.com/15865197/Dins-Curse-Mac-Playable-Demo/


You can go to http://www.soldak.com for more information about Din's Curse and Soldak Entertainment.

A new update for the Din's Curse beta.  Head here for v.910 and here for the lengthy notes.

The Din's Curse beta has hit 0.909 - grab the file here and the notes here.  As always, Steven has been diligent watching comments from fans and if you've been following the game, you can actually see the relationship between someone pointing out an issue and the immediate response.

Thanks Steven and Omega.

Depths of Peril is both one of my favourite indie games and one of the best hack'n'slash action/RPGs I've played.  Soldak's third game - Din's Curse - is just around the corner and I've been fiddling with the beta.  Here's a snip from the preview:

I spent a fair bit of my time playing a Rogue and then a Conjurer – and the gameplay was quite different. As a Rogue, I used Sneak to move around and explore (finding the gates and stairs on each level is important) and pick off trailing mobs to thin the herd, all without being seen. As a Conjurer, I used a variety of interesting summons and necromantic abilities, such as changing into a Lich and raising skeletons. Finally, I mixed a Thief (one of the Rogue Specialities) and a Fire Mage (Wizard); this was all sorts of chaotic fun – sneak into the middle of a group of mobs and then unleash fiery Armageddon.

Read it all here.

Vince over at Iron Tower has penned a preview of Din's Curse:

Basically, the dungeons are no longer static. Things are brewing and shit is piling up, getting awfully close to the fan. If you're told that some guy needs to be rescued, it means that he's fighting mobs of monsters as we speak. He may last awhile or he may not (depends on the difficulty level). If you're told that some monsters are planning a raid, it doesn’t mean that they will be waiting forever and ever for you to show up. It actually does mean that they are planning a raid and unless you drop everything and go knock some sense into them, there will be some raiding and pillaging tonight. Once the current town is saved, you get your reward and can either continue playing at a slower, more traditional pace, or move to the next town with increasingly bigger problems and deeper dungeons.

Soldak Entertainment has released another beta pacth update to their Din's Curse game. The beta patch will then be version .0908 - here's the notes:

• added to credits
• fixed level 1 scree showing up in higher levels (Gorgarax)
• fixed throw cursor on Mac
• fixed keys, flaming oil, and ice bombs not spawning correctly at higher levels (Kruztee)
• added a quest from the vendor (essentially a bet)
• now experience is last part of quest reward so that other level related rewards behave a bit better
• monsters will no longer attack traps on the ground because they hurt them (FloodSpectre/Wantonius)
• changed Next Enemy key name to Next Enemy in Melee Range (Howler)
• shift left clicking on a stackable item now splits 1 item from the stack (Howler)
• now auto pick up money if no other players in game
• fixed serrated arrow deep wounds chance (Caal)
• fixed a couple more places where delivery/retrieve wording didn't match correctly (Cadfan)
• difficulty level is now reset when you enter setup world screen (timeh)
• now check if npcs are petrified for fail condition (tkirby2003)
• updated Staying Alive/Death in manual
• better explained using skills in help/manual
• added Inventory Screen help topic
• fixed SwitchTo2ndWeaponSet / SwitchTo1stWeaponSet
• now color code weapon set I & II with green and red depending on if
• you have a weapon equipped or not
• if enter dungeon with no weapon now warn player
• fixed a double plural issue in one find quest (FloodSpectre)
• should now get credit for kills when you break a poison barrel and it kills a monster (FloodSpectre)
• fixed CastTime
• curses now have an area of effect centered at mouse (cthonic)
• decreased curses duration from 30.0 to 20.0
• fixed a skill/animation timing issue that is more noticable on skills like zeal (Gutsman)
• now reaction skills like riposte will work on auto target (Nemhir)
• now magic critical hits count in combat reaction stuff (Nemhir)
• the noise range on pain is longer related to victim's aggression range
• now thief's Concentration: Poison skill boosts archer's poison arrow skill (FloodSpectre)
• now show chance to pick lock on lock pick skill (FloodSpectre)
• got rid of File/Edit menus on Mac OS bar (Amberjoy)
• picking a lock now gives you an extra chance to disarm any potential traps also
• completely reworked stored lightning skill (Gutsman)
• fixed a or an issue with untranslated text (icekrystal10)
• fixed some spells like ShockWave checking if can see mouse position when it shouldn't
• increased alcohol, acid, and magma AddAdditionalChance
• increased alcohol, acid, and ice spread chances
• now spiders can spawn webs just as obstacles for enemies (getter77)
• now can choose slow pace, normal, or fast pace on new world (Lyranaar/derailed)
• increased level up volume some (Lyranaar)
• reworded location for some quests to One Possible Location (Archon)
• now get a health bar for person you are escorting (Ephemera/Flailsnail)
• can now switch master server zones without leaving game (Twotricks)
• increased most set bonuses

Steven Peeler continues to furiously hammer out the updates to the Din's Curse beta, with 0.907 just released.  Patch files here, notes here and watch for our preview on Monday.

Omega writes in with a couple of short previews we haven't seen before for Din's Curse.  Here's a snip from the Adrenaline Vault:

In Din’s Curse you arrive in a town with an entrance to a randomly generated dungeon. You must do various quests to gain reputation for your good deeds. If you fail to complete missions in a certain time, they might come back to haunt you. For instance, if you are given a mission to kill a boss and if you don’t finish it fast enough, he will continue to send minions to destroy the town. If all the people in town are dead, then you lose. You must finish all the quests in each town that you visit. Once you get to higher levels, more challenging options such as hardcore and cursed mode become available. In hardcore mode, if your character dies, he or she stays dead forever; no more respawns. In cursed mode, you can only use cursed items that negatively affect one of your stats.

...and DIYGamer from a week or so back:

Of course, character customization aside, the game does offer some unique traits behind it. For one, it would appear that every character I make starts out in a new town, with a different dungeon, and different monsters inhabiting that dungeon. While some tings remain the same, it’s interesting to see that you won’t be playing the same game everytime you wish to start a new game. Likewise, even the quests are different. I suppose the only downside to this would be the fact that the quests are randomized and, as such, you won’t be playing any hugely long epic quests like you otherwise would’ve in Diablo or Titan’s Quest.

Soldak Entertainment has updated their beta patch to version 09.06, for Din's Curse, their action RPG, which is to be released later this year. Here's the patch notes:

• fixed not getting highlight difficulty options right after winning or losing a town (Cadfan/Ephemera/wunar)
• fixed paladin mana bonus per spirit
• fixed changeling fake names (Rockstronaut)
• increased MaxItemGenerationTries from 10 to 75 on ring vendor (wunar)
• added altars, healthstones, and lifestones to low health help topic
• should now always see your damage even if really far away (viper34j)
• fixed horror ice storm
• decreased serrated arrow damage mult from 0.4 to 0.15
• decreased dark elf priest bolt damage mult from 2.0 to 1.5 since it's magic damage (Spect)
• made stalker a little less powerful, but no longer has a reuse timer (Lyranaar)
• made kodiak more powerful
• NPCs can no longer find lost items in the dungeon (TheRani)
• added some text to escort quests about not being able to follow you through gates (TheRani)
• fixed shading out other menu buttons on quest screen
• now quests check to see if have or can at least spawn return to npc (Kruztee/getter77/Nemhir)
• monsters that can give quests can no longer be uniques (Gutsman)
• made walls fade out a little more (spelk)
• improved ! in smaller fonts a little bit
• escort quests don't need to escort quite as far any more
• the game no longer changes the gamma if set to 1.0 and hasn't been changed already (Ikarius)
• now check better that boss quest is valid (Cadfan)
• fixed some targeting issues when have an object selected
• now get vendor has left town messages (getter77)
• fixed punctuation on a lot of quest announcements (FloodSpectre)
• mana regen effect is now blue (Archon)
• now lifestone/altars have mana and health regen effects
• fixed shrink trap getting rid of flame blade (Cadfan)
• changed Din's Altar status effect text to Din's Blessing (Valgor)
• chaos lord summons are now faster (Warlock)
• no longer let monster level offset be too high for difficulty level (Cadfan)
• changed protocol version to 3
• now many of the quests will change to obsolete instead of outright fail (viper34j)
• only lose half reputation loss if obsolete quest as opposed to failing a quest
• now get xp when fires you started kill things (Aganazer/vomitousinsight/Cadfan)
• now mouse wheel works on scroll bars (Aganazer)
• decreased cave in health mult from 4.0 to 2.0
• decreased dimensional gate spawn rate from 1.5 to 0.75
• improved collision on armor stands, weapon stands, and lockers in town (Cadfan)
• no longer show health bars on open doors (Cadfan)
• fixed a timing issue when attacking with mouse buttons and with keys at same time (Aganazer)
• added some variation in cower timing
• enrage now distracts and disrupts skills/spells (getter77)
• no longer need an enemy to use enrage
• increased shield bash damage (Nemhir)
• enrage now interrupts spells also
• made wampir targeting a little easier (Rockstronaut)
• npcs will no longer finish build quests (Gutsman/L337GTIMKV)
• now can pickup other peoples soul stones if they leave the game (viper34j)
• fixed 2 gather quests breaking one another (FloodSpectre)
• fixed an issue picking up stacks of items (Lyranaar)
• decreased health mult of food from 0.6 to 0.55 (also makes cheaper)
• now cold, fire, lightning, and poison magic modifiers are more common
• increased durabilty damage from doors, chests, cave-ins, and acid
• increased HealthRegenPerVit from 0.8 to 1.2
• monsters/npcs no longer use dps for their damage numbers
• fixed lots of caster damages that were higher than they were supposed to be
• decreased shatter explosion radius from 200.0 to 150.0
• increased health magic modifier from 1.0/0.4 to 4.0/1.0 (L337GTIMKV)
• decreased attribute magic modifiers from 0.35 to 0.2 per level
• fixed Rawhide Shoulders capitalization (FloodSpectre)
• female pain sounds now have less pitch range (TheRani/incognoscente)
• fixed minimap when zooming in and out (incognoscente)
• fixed mouse not working after escaping a screen with a drop down box open (incognoscente)
• drop down boxes now close if you click somewhere else
• if something that has grabbed the mouse doesn't handle a click now other things can
• Dark Elf poison stab now does poison damage
• now cure poison works on wampir and dark elf poison also (timeh)
• increased cure poison heal from 2.0 to 3.0 per level (timeh)
• changed wampir damage from 1.5/0.25 to 0.35/0.35 so that cure poison numbers match up a bit better
• now remove thief correctly when the thief leaves town (viper34j)
• now thief quest works better if higher level than character
• decreased starting monsters in an invasion from 9-12 to 2-4
• fixed a crash with new targeting stuff
• players and monsters can no longer raise things they can't see (L337GTIMKV)
• decreased berserk defense penalty from -0.2 to -0.1 per level (L337GTIMKV)
• increased obelisk buff time from 20.0 to 60.0 (L337GTIMKV)
• increased rupture damage/deepwounds per level numbers from 0.1/0.2 to 0.15/0.25 (FloodSpectre)
• balanced Bloodtooth a bit better, thorns & regen on a scavenger is pretty nasty (Aganazer)
• added a defense debuff to enrage
• increased enrage reusetime from 10.0 to 15.0
• reworded Sleight of Hand description (cthonic)
• increased door health from 5-10 to 8-16 per level
• increased chest health from 6-12 to 9-18 per level
• now treasure hunter skill has items chance and magic chance bonus (cthonic)
• added critical hit chance to true aim buff (cthonic)
• fixed divine intervention description (cthonic)
• increased divine intervention mana/heal boosts to 75 per level (cthonic)
• increased summoned fire elemental damage bonuses
• decreased cooking MaxSkillLevel from 10 to 9
• sprint no longer costs mana
• increased sprint initial bonus from 0.1 to 0.2
• sprint now gives you some stamina regen
• dark ritual now costs more mana but lasts longer (cthonic)
• added movement and damage bonuses to lich skill (cthonic)
• gaseous form no longer uses mana and give stamina (cthonic)
• increased infused energy mana from 10 to 40 (Gutsman)
• now weapons & armor gets damage/armor boosts at each rarity level (viper34j/cthonic 

Soldak has posted Din's Curse monster profiles for the Evil Leprechaun, the Scree, and the Plaguebringer.  They also sent over a preview summary - we've posted some of these but I'll just provide a rip:

neXGam (German) preview at http://www.nexgam.de/games/dins-curse-macintosh.html
Gametactics preview at http://www.gametactics.com/?view=article&article=2855
XPD8.net preview at http://www.xpd8.net/articles.asp?id=67
Gamers Daily News preview at http://www.gamersdailynews.com/article-2357-Dins-Curse-Preview-PC.html
GamersInfo.net preview at http://www.gamersinfo.net/articles/3105-dins-curse

Ahem, GamersInfo follow up on their recent interview with a preview of Din's Curse.

Din’s Curse has a lot of elements in common with Soldak’s previous games, but it also introduces quite a bit of new gameplay and a lot of surprises. For fans of the action-RPG genre, the different style of gameplay and tricky enemy AI attempts to keep the genre fresh; the class combinations also could easily keep some people occupied for quite some time. The randomness of almost every element present in the game, for me, is a bit of a letdown; but then again, I’m a huge sucker for a persistent world and the story that goes with it.

Soldak has kicked up details of the Priest class and their three specialties (Paladin, Healer, Shaman), with a list of all the skills available.

There was also an interview at GamersInfo we missed from a week or two back:

GamersInfo.net: The other feature of Din’s Curse that I took note of was the dynamic world and quest system. How does that work, and how did it come about? 

Steven Peeler: Instead of starting in the same world each time, in Din’s Curse, you start in a new town that has different problems than any other town. It doesn’t stop there, though; these quests aren’t static. If you don’t do anything about them, they will cause other trouble. For example, let’s say the boss Nightweaver has taken over level 5 of Frantic Pit. Nightweaver isn’t just going to sit there doing nothing waiting for you. He might cause a Saurian uprising, build an earthquake machine, send an assassin into town to try to kill the townspeople or do one of many other possible things. Other monsters can even impact the quests. In our boss example, Earthstomper might show up and kill Nightweaver to take over the dungeon.

Depths of Peril had a pretty dynamic world, and I thought it worked out really well. Our gamers and reviewers have also been pretty positive about it. So for Din’s Curse, we have really expanded it. There are more quests and many quest chains. We’re also much more careful about informing the gamer why something happened.

As the beta for Din's Curse continues and the release gets closer, HonestGamers has a preview:

During my time with Din's Curse, the game was giving me a heavier Roguelike vibe than previous Soldak titles have. One of the other big ticket features introduced with this title is the randomly-generated world. The towns that you're trying to save and the dungeon levels that you must explore in order to do so are all random. It's a shame that there isn't more character to the individual towns, but at least the quests and layout change every time you begin a new game.

There's also Roguelike difficulty to Din's Curse, particularly once you advance in levels. Diablo fans will be pleased at the inclusion of a Hardcore mode in which character death is permanent, but Din's Curse  can be plenty difficult even without the looming specter of perma-death. At a certain level, mobs begin to throw down some pretty serious damage, and you had better be prepared!

In other Din's Curse news, v.905 for the beta has been released.

Steven Peeler has kicked up a Progress Report on Din's Curse as  get to a few weeks from launch:

Today, I released our 4th patch. In those four patches, I have made 309 changes. Well over half of those are changes directly from gamer feedback. There are still many changes coming that I haven't gotten to though. Right now my todo list has 241 items on it. One of these days I will get this back down to zero.

Speaking of those changes, patch 0.904 has been released for those with the beta. Changes can be read here.

The patches are rolling out quickly as Soldak works on the beta for Din's Curse.  0.903 is out with a handful of fixes and balance tweaks.  Thanks, shaf.

Soldak has an update on the Rogue class from Din's Curse over at their site.

Don't forget, this is only for pre-order beta access.  v0.902 is out - grab it here and read the notes here.

If you preordered Din's Curse and joined the beta, a new v0.901 has been released.  You can grab the file here and read the change log here.  Balance changes, fan suggestions and a bunch of typos are all addressed.

Soldak has opened preorders of their upcoming game, Din's Curse.  In return for placing an order, you'll get the game for the discounted price of $19.99 and get to download and play the current beta version.

Edit:  here's the official PR.

Dallas, Texas, February 3, 2010 - Pre-orders of Din's Curse are now available at http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Buy.html

Gamers who pre-order Din's Curse will receive full access to the latest beta build, a reduced pre-order price of only $19.99, single player and co-op multiplayer (both LAN and internet), the opportunity to give Soldak feedback on our forums which can influence the game, and of course, the final game version when it becomes available.

The pre-order price will last until the game is released in about a month.

Din, champion of the gods, has cursed you into a second life of service because you selfishly squandered your first one while causing misfortune to those around you. To redeem yourself, you must impress Din by building a reputation for helping others. Travel the spacious western plains of Aleria and save desperate towns from the brink of annihilation. Until you're redeemed, you're doomed to wander the earth alone for all eternity.

In Din's Curse, you will explore an extensive underground, slaying dangerous monsters, solving dynamic quests, dodging deadly traps, and in your spare time, plundering loot. Quell uprisings, flush out traitors, kill assassins, cure plagues, purge curses, end wars, and complete other dangerous quests or the danger WILL escalate. Not all is as it seems though, traitors will gladly stab you in the back, renegades can revolt against the town, spies can set up ambushes, and items might even curse or possess your friends.

Choose one of 141 class combinations and journey to an infinite number of dynamically generated towns with vastly different problems. Every game is a surprise! Your actions have real consequences in this dynamic, evolving world. Your choices actually matter!

Open the door to Din's Curse. Surprising adventures await!

Din's Curse is scheduled to be released in the 1st quarter of 2010, however it will be released when it's done.

For more information about Din's Curse, head over to http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Overview.html

Soldak has kicked up profiles for the Creeping Brood, Shadow and Naga from Din's Curse.

There's also an interview over at Werit's blog, focused on the development side:

Werit:  How many Soldak people work on the game?  Do you contract out any parts of the game or is it all done in house? 

Steven:  I’m the only fulltime Soldak employee and I do all of the programming and design. I should mention that a ton of great ideas comes from the rest of the team and from our gamers though. My wife (Delilah) is involved quite a bit doing the writing and lots of play testing. The rest of our team are contractors who handle the sound, music, and art. In house or contractors though, I couldn’t make our games without them.

Soldak sent over news of a new update on the progress of Din's Curse:

I thought I would write up another short progress report for Din's Curse. So far alpha has been going pretty well. Our alpha testers are liking the game and it's getting better every day. A very good sign is that I'm spotting less things to fix and having more fun actually playing the game during our daily play testing.

The full post is here.

Soldak release info on their latest class for Din's Curse: the Conjurer.

Dark magic courses through steely veins. Mighty power rest in the palms of the conjurers including mastery of lightning, vile curses and diseases, calling forth demons from beyond and raising the dead as mindless slaves.

Specialties: Warlock, Necromancer, and Sorcerer.

Soldak has released three new Din's Curse screens.

Steven Peeler from Soldak writes that Din's Curse has hit Alpha:

Well Din's Curse is finally in alpha. Technically it started over a week ago during the holidays. I was hoping we would be at this point in early November. However, with Soldak I really try to stick with the idea of releasing our games when they are done, not when an arbitrary schedule says to. We have spent the extra two months making Din a much better game. In the long run, I think this is the right decision. In the short term it hurts though (less revenue for last year and we missed submitting to IGF).

Three new monster profiles at the Din's Curse site - the Frenzy Targ, Fury and Sentinel.

Soldak has added three new monster profiles to the Din's Curse page with the addition of the Undead Herald, Chaos Lord and Lich.

A blog update on Din's Curse offcial site, made by Steven Peeler from Soldak Entertainment, explains how quests in this game come in the shape of a web, which is non-linear:

If you could look at all of the quests/missions in a game and the connections between them, most games would form a linear line. Personally I find that kind of sad. RPGs tend to do a little better and many times will form a tree. In Din's Curse (and also Depths of Peril to some extent) they form a web. A very dense web at that.

I have added a good example of how this works lately to the game: the darkness machine. This is a machine that once built causes the entire area to get much darker than usual. This doesn't sound too bad except it screws with the local crops so food prices go up. Monsters tend to be much more aggressive when it is dark so the town you are trying to save is much more likely to be attacked. Also now that one machine is up and functioning it encourages other monsters to build other machines to wreck havoc on the town (like earthquake or weather machines).

Soldak has released details of the Wizard class in Din's Curse, listing the skills available across the three specialties of Fire, Ice and Magician.

Soldak Entertainment updates  the monster profiles for their dungeon crawler Din's Curse, with details on three new adversaries: the Changeling, the FireThrower and the Death Knight.

Soldak Entertainment has posted a look at another one of the classes from their upcoming dungeon crawler, Din's Curse, the Ranger, including details on the skill selections of the three subclasses.

Snip:

A jack of many trades, these lone fighters wield ranged weapons with skill, throw down deadly traps, and use shapeshifting to befuddle and decimate fearsome foes.

Specialties: Archer, Hunter, and Druid.

Steven Peeler's latest blog entry describes the addition of earthquakes to Din's Curse:

So yesterday I added in an earthquake event. It's a pretty simple thing, every once in a while there will be an earthquake that shakes things up and will damage things nearby. However because there are so many systems that work together it has a bigger impact than you'd expect.

Everything in the area getting damaged a little bit will probably be minor to the player, except when they are foolishly running around with low health. It will usually flatten fragile things like barrels and crates. Really unstable things are going to cause problems, like exploding barrels and energy vortexes will go boom. Of course this can set off a chain reaction of other unstable things.

Soldak has unveiled the first class and first monster from Din's Curse:

Today we revealed the first player class, the Warrior, with its 3 specialties and the first monster, the Scavenger. Check out the warrior on the Din's Curse classes page and the Scavenger on the Din's Curse monsters page.

Rampant Games posted that there are a few screenshots of Soldak's upcoming game Din's Curse. It's looking good. The more I read about this game the better it sounds and now looks.

Vince D. Weller has interviewed fellow indie developer Steven Peeler on the ITS forums.  The questions start out talking about Soldak's background and choices but quickly focus on Din's Curse:

9. The press-release boldly claims that "your choices truly impact the game". Care to elaborate and give this very demanding audience some examples? I'm a big fan of choices & consequences, but I'm not sure how well this concept fits the action genre.

I have tried to build this game as much as possible to give you meaningful choices. Here are some examples.
 
Just simply going down another level in the dungeon is a big choice. Each level down the monsters and traps get harder so it is simply more dangerous. This isn’t surprising or anything; however you have no instant gate and can’t abuse the save/resume system to get back into town. The farther into a dungeon level you adventure, the farther you are from the last gate to home (well until you find the next gate). This gets even more interesting if you are playing a hardcore character.

Let me give you a good quest example also. The town leaders have found out that Azrael seems to be planning something. You don’t know what he is planning, but a Death Knight probably isn’t planning a tea party. You really do have to decide if dealing with Azrael is important to do now or if you have better things to do at the moment. Sometimes like in this example you don’t have too much information to work with. In this particular example, Azrael is planning on raiding the town. If you don’t kill him, he will send his minions into town for a quick raid and he will probably keep raiding the town till the town is dead or he is. Considering NPCs can die, this is very dangerous for you. Completing quests for dead NPCs doesn’t work very well. It’s also hard to sell and buy items from dead vendors.

Even a simple chest presents a potentially difficult choice. Each chest tells you what kind of trap you think is protecting it and what the chance you are correct is. Both of these are based on your character’s perception. Some traps are pretty nasty like the pit trap. So if you find a chest that you think has a pit trap on it and you are already deeper in the dungeon than you feel comfortable, will you open the chest and risk getting dropped to a lower level?

In related news, the very first screens have been revealed at the official site.

Steven Peeler writes about Locks, Traps and the Warrior Way in his latest blog post for Din's Curse.  He plans to make chests a little bit different:

For Din's Curse, I have expanded the gameplay around chests, and given the player some actual choices. All of this post applies to doors also, but I'm just going to reference chests for simplicity. In most RPGs, especially action RPGs, opening a chest is not a choice. It is something you automatically do every time you find a chest. In Din's Curse, I expect a few chests here and there to be left alone, at least for a little while.

...and the possible consequences:

The choices can get harder though. What if you are deep in the dungeon, your health is low, you have no more supplies, you are playing a hardcore character, the current level is fairly hard, and your perception tells you that the chest in front of you has a pit trap that will drop you to the next dungeon level? What do you do? Do you risk it?

Soldak's Steven Peeler has been busy with the first two interviews for their upcoming game, Din's Curse.  Here's a snip from Examiner.com giving an overview, although much of the conversation is about Steven's background and the industry:

Your newest game, Din's Curse, is supposed to have feature some unique game-play elements from dynamic generated towns to real consequences, can you elaborate on these features and how you plan on implementing them?

 Well first off the world is randomly generated. Each town you are to save has completely different problems (quests) that need to be solved and has different NPCs. The dungeons below the towns are also highly random. There are many dungeon and cave types, but even within the same type the layout will be unique each time. Within the dungeons the items, monsters, and objects are also placed randomly. Even the world itself has a different skew each time. One world might have lots of undead and the next might have lots of treasure. We want every single game to be unique. You will see many of the same elements here and there of course, but we want the mix to be fresh and different each time. One of my overall goals for Din’s Curse is to have a game that can surprise me even though I know about all of the individual pieces.

After the world is setup, it is still very dynamic. Things will progress depending on what the player does or doesn’t do, what the NPCs do, and what the monsters do. This leads to real consequences.

I like having actual consequences for the choices you make. If there is no consequence, then it isn’t really a choice. Should you save Gwen who has been kidnapped or deal with the Orc uprising first? In most games it doesn’t really matter either way. In Din’s Curse, if you deal with the uprising first, Gwen might die. If you save Gwen, the Orcs might start a war or raid the town. Of course if you are good, you might very well save Gwen and quell the uprising before anything worse happens.

Most of these things already work so we are past the planning phase. We are, however, constantly adding more pieces to provide more and more variety.

...and a sample from Werit's blog:

Werit:  With such a dynamic world, how do you keep everything from feeling disjointed?  Are there still 'epic' storylines or just one shot quests?

There are no epic storylines or one shot quests exactly. How it works is that each quest has the possibility of branching out to many other quests. Things basically flow from one quest to another just like an epic storyline, except the difference is that which branch is taken is based on the actions of the player, monsters, and NPCs.

Finally, Werit also has a short preview:

The first area which sets Din's apart is the character creation.   You don't just choose a class archetype and be on your way.  Instead Din's uses a hybrid skill system that gives the player around 141 class options.  That should add some nice replay value.

The latest entry in Steven Peeler's blog talks about dungeon cave-ins for Din's Curse, which sounds like a pretty cool idea:

Even without monsters and traps, the caves and dungeons in Din's Curse are dangerous. This is because you can interact with the environment in many ways. Today I'm going to talk about cave-ins because they're a great example of engaging the environment, but cave-ins also work with many other systems I've previously discussed.

A cave-in is exactly what you expect, large forces like explosions can break weakened areas of the cave or dungeon causing large rocks to fall down, crushing whatever is below them. Falling rocks do a good bit of damage, can temporarily block areas, and can cause further cave ins. Be careful with those powerful spells. They might kill your intended victims, but they also might rain down boulders on you or block your escape route.

Steven Peeler from Soldak talks about the random dungeons in their upcoming Din's Curse, including several example diagrams:

The caves and dungeons in Din's Curse are completely random. Each dungeon will use different models, different textures, use secrets in different ways, have special rooms, favorite monsters, and completely different layouts. My goal is for each type of dungeon to have a fairly distinct feel, but yet each time still be quite different.

Unlike many action RPGs, we'll have random secrets in our levels to make things more interesting. Sometimes these will be hard to find and other times fairly easy. Each dungeon type will use secrets in different ways- like having all of the secrets at dead ends, or all hidden inside rooms.

Soldak has officially announced their third game, which they've previously referred to as a "hardcore dungeon crawler".  Din's Curse will use procedurally generated content combined with the choices and condequences Steven has previously discussed:

Choose one of 141 class combinations and journey to an infinite number of dynamically generated towns with vastly different problems. Every game is a surprise! Your actions have real consequences in this dynamic, evolving world. Your choices actually matter!

Din, champion of the gods, has cursed you into a second life of service because you selfishly squandered your first one while causing misfortune to those around you. To redeem yourself, you must impress Din by building a reputation for helping others. Travel the spacious western plains of Aleria and save desperate towns from the brink of annihilation. Until you're redeemed, you're doomed to wander the earth alone for all eternity.

In Din's Curse, you will explore an extensive underground, slaying dangerous monsters, solving dynamic quests, dodging deadly traps, and in your spare time, plundering loot. Quell uprisings, flush out traitors, kill assassins, cure plagues, purge curses, end wars, and complete other dangerous quests or the danger WILL escalate. Not all is as it seems though, traitors will gladly stab you in the back, renegades can revolt against the town, spies can set up ambushes, and items might even curse or possess your friends.

Open the door to Din's Curse. Surprising adventures await!
 
Features

    * Uniquely created worlds for every game, with different monsters, items, quests, and even townspeople, give the player a new experience every time
    * Explore a dynamic, evolving, living world
    * Many hybrid classes to experience - 6 full classes, 18 specialties, 141 total combinations
    * Your choices truly impact the game
    * Surprising, emergent gameplay
    * Co-op multiplayer to adventure with friends 

No screens yet but you can hop over to their forums for discussion.