Video Game / DROD RPG

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DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale (2008) and its sequel DROD RPG 2: A Courageous Rescue (2025) are spinoffs of the Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD) series by Caravel Games. Both games take the monsters and room elements of DROD — such as orbs and doors, one-way arrows, bombs and fuses — and combine them with the gameplay of the "Magic Tower" genre of puzzle RPG, pioneered by Tower of the Sorcerer. (In fact, most monsters appearing in Tendry's Tale have stat values taken directly from monsters in Tower of the Sorcerer.)

Unlike in DROD, monsters do not move by default. Instead, the player can freely choose when to initiate combat and when to try to avoid fighting. There is no randomness, so the outcome of any combat can be calculated precisely in advance; the puzzle in each level is to work out the best sequence to fight monsters in so as to gain access to keys to unlock progress, and gems that increase the player's stats and make further combats cheaper.

The protagonist is Tendry Dimpalm, a stalwart of Tueno, who first appeared in DROD in The City Beneath as one of the few survivors of the Stalwart Army's attack on the Rooted Empire. The first half of Tendry's Tale follows his return to the surface, while in the second half, he discovers that the Empire have been abducting Tuenan citizens, and begins a journey underground to try to get to the bottom of things. A Courageous Rescue takes place at the same time as the final DROD game, The Second Sky; having finally got a lead as to the whereabouts of his countrymen, Tendry sets off back down to bring them safely home.

Just as with the DROD games, both games have a free demo version, containing only one room style and the beginning of the official hold; but the demos have full functionality as regards editing and playing user-made holds. Caravel Games makes money selling the full versions, which have more graphics, canonical plots with voice acting, and generally a high level of quality. The games are multi-platform as well, with versions for Windows, Macintosh and Linux available. This means you can download the game, the user-made styles and the user-made holds, all for free, which will last most people for years, and you just have to pay for official Caravel releases.

The games are downloadable at Caravel Games' main site and on Steam.

Tropes in the games:

• Achievement System: A Courageous Rescue has several achievements for completing one chapter of the hold with a more challenging condition, such as never using a blue key, or never picking up a shield.
• Anti-Frustration Features: A Courageous Rescue gives more information to the player, to avoid the necessity of Trial-and-Error Gameplay. You can pick up level maps that fully reveal every room, and the built-in damage calculator displays more of the special properties some monsters have.
• Arc Words: As in the main DROD series, "The Grand Event". Tendry hears some Imperial workers using the phrase early in A Courageous Rescue, and later on meets Halph, who explains that it refers to the Turning, a complete gravitational reversal that would cause every object on the surface to fall into the sky.
• Backtracking: Some RPG holds allow backtracking to previous levels, so that you can leave power-ups behind tough monsters and come back for them later when those monsters are cheaper. Others don't, so that anything you leave behind on an early level is lost forever.
  • The first level of Tendry's Tale has an Easter Egg you can only reach with the Grappling Hook, obtained on Level 7.
  • A Courageous Rescue has no backtracking in Chapter 1, to keep things simpler for new players, but allows it in Chapters 2 and 3.
• BFS:
  • The top tier of sword is called the Really Big Sword.
  • The second-best sword, the Wyrm Smiter, is just a recoloured Longsword in Tendry's Tale, but A Courageous Rescue gives it a new sprite, making it much broader and heftier than the other weapons.
• Block Puzzle: Tendry's Tale has a puzzle in Rule 6 where several platforms must be rearranged. If done correctly, this allows the player to skip fighting a tough monster, making the Longsword easier to obtain.
• Bonus Level:
  • In the first half of Tendry's Tale, by working out where to use the various accessories (one-use power-ups), the player can open a secret exit in Rule 7 that leads to a further level.
  • A Courageous Rescue has a bonus level halfway through the hold, focused on puzzles rather than combat.
• Boss Battle: Both games have a boss fight at the end of most levels.
• Brain Monster: One of the monsters borrowed from DROD is a giant brain. In DROD RPG, where most monsters don't move and so pathfinding is irrelevant, a brain instead doubles the Attack stat of every enemy in the room. Two brains quadruple the Attack stat, and so on.
• Character Portrait: Tendry's portrait is displayed at most times, with other character portraits taking its place to indicate who is speaking. In usermade holds, this can also indicate when you are playing as someone else.
• Checkpoint: Unlike in DROD, the player can save at any time, but there are also autosave points in both holds.
• Completion Meter: On completion of every hold, you are told what percentage of hidden rooms you have found and solved. Unlike in DROD, there are no "master walls" that open when you find them all, so getting 100% is purely cosmetic.
• Context-Sensitive Button: The "special command" was introduced in Tendry's Tale and later ported to the main DROD games. It does nothing itself, but the in-game scripting language can detect and respond to it. It's used in the second half of Tendry's Tale to open the player's inventory, but in usermade holds, it can do pretty much anything.
• Crate Expectations: A Courageous Rescue introduces crates as a game element. Tendry can push them around, climb on them, and use them to help him climb over doors.
• Cryptic Conversation: Just as in the main DROD games, nearly everyone underground is, in one way or the other, incapable of answering questions normally, and so Tendry, just like Beethro, is driven to explore ever deeper in search of answers.
• Do Not Drop Your Weapon: Just like Beethro, Tendry cannot put his sword down most of the time, even when it would be to his advantage to do so. However, some holds have empty weapon slots to allow the player to disarm, and in the second half of Tendry's Tale, the inventory allows you to disarm at any time.
• Edge Gravity: Tendry has the same "smitemaster reflexes" as Beethro, preventing him from moving into a pit and dying.
• Ending by Ascending: The first half of Tendry's Tale ends with Tendry returning to the surface, after beginning his adventure underground. In A Courageous Rescue, the last chapter also ends with Tendry's triumphant return to the surface, having rescued his captive countrymen.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep":
  • Tendry meets (and kills) three Goblin Kings, all of whom are referred to only by title. It's not clear whether any of them are the same Goblin King who appeared in Journey to Rooted Hold and The City Beneath.
  • Similarly, both holds have a Pirate Captain, who may or may not be the same one as in The City Beneath.
  • The 'Neather (from "beneather", one living underground). In Tendry's Tale, the title conceals the fact that the 'Neather is Beethro's nephew, Halph. This is revealed when they meet again in A Courageous Rescue.
• Extra Turn: Speed potions are imported from the main DROD games. in DROD RPG, they allow the player two combat rounds for each enemy round.
• Eye Beams: The Aumtlich's eyes emit a constant beam of light that stuns any player coming in contact with it, halving their HP in Tendry's Tale, and dealing 250 HP damage in A Courageous Rescue.
• Flame Spewer Obstacle: Fire traps, introduced in The Second Sky, reappear in A Courageous Rescue. They now deal 1000 HP damage if you step on them, but fortunately they can be turned off with orbs or pressure plates.
• Flunky Boss: The 'Neather in Tendry's Tale has eight minions who must be defeated before fighting him. The Pirate Captain has twelve, although by that point it's possible to obtain a Pickaxe and bypass them.
• Foregone Conclusion: A Courageous Rescue was released after The Second Sky, so players who play both DROD and DROD RPG will already know the broad strokes of what happens: Tendry learns about the Grand Event, meets Beethro again, and succeeds in rescuing his countrymen.
• Gameplay Automation: Combat can be resolved automatically by pressing the spacebar, and there's a setting to automatically resolve all combat. Since it's entirely deterministic, this always has the same outcome as letting events play out the slow way.
• Genre-Busting: It's a mash-up of Puzzle Game and RPG Elements. Games of this type have come to be called "magic towers".
• The Great Serpent: Serpents can be many tiles long, and you have the choice of fighting them head first (which kills them outright) or tail first (which shortens them by one tile). Removing a serpent by shortening it one tile at a time is more costly in terms of health, but rewards the player with more money.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: There's nothing in the game engine that says that the player's weapon has to be a sword, but most weapons in the setting are swords. The main exception is the Slayer's hook, and they're typically villains.
  • In Tendry's Tale, the Hook is one of the weapons available to the player, for the first time in the series.
  • A Courageous Rescue provides some new weapon options, based on those in The Second Sky. The dagger is small and lightweight, so it doesn't trigger orbs in adjacent tiles. The staff doesn't trigger explosives, but can't damage breakable walls. The spear is especially good at cutting tarstuff.
• Hooks and Crooks: Hooks are the signature weapon of the Rooted Empire's Slayers, a force of sadistic and egotistical killers that hunt down surfacers that the Empire wants dead, and Slayers are always eager to talk about how they'll murder you with their hooks.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
  • The levels of the first half of Tendry's Tale are named after the eight Rules of the Stalwarts' code of conduct.
  • All three chapters of A Courageous Rescue have the initials ACR.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Really Big Sword is Beethro's default weapon, but in Tendry's Tale it's the heftiest of several tiers of weapon, with 220 Attack (the next highest, the Hook, has 120). It can be seen, but not obtained, when passing through the second level (Goblin Tribe); actually getting it requires defeating a powerful Unique Enemy.
• Invincible Minor Minion: Averted. Wubbas, which were invincible in the main DROD games, now just have a very high Defense stat, so they can be killed with enough Attack.
• Level Editor: Just as with the main DROD games, DROD RPG has a level editor and there are already many usermade holds.
• Low Fantasy: There isn't anything explicitly magical in this setting, but with orbs and Pressure Plates that shoot lightning at doors to open them, and potions that, when drunk, allow one to move through monsters, there's some stuff that nobody's yet explained with science.
• Money Is Experience Points: Each level in the second half of Tendry's Tale contains a Machine, which lets you exchange greckles (the game's currency) for an increase to one of your stats. The Machines on later levels give better value. They return in Chapter 3 of A Courageous Rescue.
• Money Multiplier: The Lucky Greckle (an accessory) and the Lucky Blade (a weak weapon) both double money dropped by enemies. Of the two, Tendry's Tale has only the Lucky Blade, and A Courageous Rescue has only the Lucky Greckle. However, usermade holds may include both items, and they stack for a 4x increase if both are worn together.
• Monster Clown: Slayers seem to exclusively dress in this manner, although details in appearance vary.
• Monster Mash: Giant roaches, goblins, golems, serpents, and fegundos (phoenixes) are all present and accounted for.
• Monsters Everywhere: The usual state of affairs. In order to cross any stretch of wilderness or reach any underground location, you'll have to kill some monsters or solve some puzzles.
• Mook Maker: Downplayed compared to DROD. Roach queens now only lay one egg at a time, and those eggs don't hatch into roaches.
• Negative Stat Value:
  • The player's and monsters' ATK and DEF can be negative, and everything works as expected: for instance, a player with -5 ATK deals 5 damage per hit to a monster with -10 DEF. The main use for this is that architects may wish to start the player with metal equipment and low stats so that early-game monsters are still relevant: for example, with a short sword (+30 ATK) and a base ATK of -20, the player's initial total ATK will be 10.
  • GR and REP (reputation) can also be negative. GR is normally money (it stands for "greckles", the game's currency), but an architect may want to use it as a miscellaneous stat, so allowing negative numbers makes this more flexible.
  • All the multiplier variables that affect how much you gain from drinking potions or taking stat gems can be negative. With a negative multiplier for HP, drinking potions damages the player!
• No-Gear Level: The disarm token or oremites enforce putting away your weapon within one room, and there's also a scripting command that will permanently remove the player's weapon until another scripting command gives it back.
• Non-Indicative Name: DROD RPG is a mathematical puzzle game with RPG Elements. It's not really an RPG.
• Non-Player Companion: "Roachie", Tendry's pet roach, accompanies him some of the time, and can be placed on pressure plates to help solve some puzzles.
• Nostalgia Level: "Homeland", the first level of A Courageous Rescue, calls back to a level from Tendry's Tale.
• Oculothorax: Evil Eyes. They face a particular direction, and damage Tendry if he steps directly in front of them.
• One-Hit Kill: Explosives (including the Hand Bomb) deal percentage damage to everything in their radius. The percentage can be modified by scripting, but by default it's 100%.
• One-Hit Polykill: Explosions serve as this, destroying many objects in any squares they hit.
• One-Man Army: Tendry, just like Beethro, kills a lot of monsters and enemies throughout both games. This is lampshaded in the song he sings in the secret ending.
• Only Smart People May Pass: Essentially the entire game. This is the only security system anyone has.
• Onscreen Chapter Titles: A Courageous Rescue is divided into three chapters.
• Pressure Plate: Another game element imported from DROD. Tendry's Tale has only one type, which activates both when stepped on and when stepped off (although if a plate is set to open-only or close-only, this essentially does the same thing as the single-use type of pressure plate). A Courageous Rescue has all three types of pressure plate from DROD: single-use, on-off and multi-use.
• Point-and-Click Map: Not used in the main holds, but the DROD RPG 2 game engine supports world maps for usermade holds.
• Point of No Return: The first chapter of A Courageous Rescue doesn't allow backtracking to previous levels. Just before the end of each level is a very clear point of no return, together with an NPC who will (if asked) give hints on whether you are leaving the level with good enough stats to continue.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: In usermade holds, the player may control a female avatar, but there are no gameplay differences.
• Rock Monster: The rock golems from DROD are present in this game too. They no longer leave rubble behind; instead, their gimmick is having unusually high DEF, but low HP.
• RPG Elements: The player and monsters have HP, Attack and Defense stats, together with items that power them up.
• Scoring Points:
  • Tendry's Tale has a scoring system, using a formula based on your character stats.
  • A Courageous Rescue allows architects to modify the scoring formula. Most importantly, choosing to play on easy mode means that each stat contributes a lot less to score, so that even though you can get higher stats on easy, the best scores will be achieved on normal difficulty.
• Sequence Breaking: Both games include accessories (single-use power-ups), some of which have powerful abilities such as jumping over a door or even flipping to the opposite side of a room. It's up to the architect to watch out for the various ways the player might be able to exploit these.
  • In the first half of Tendry's Tale, there is a hidden sequence for using the accessories that the player is meant to puzzle out, with the correct use of each accessory unlocking the next one in the chain, and completing the entire chain unlocks Rule 8. Thanks to the invisibility potion's ability to let the player move through monsters, it's possible to access Rule 8 with the invisibility potion alone, skipping the entire sequence.
  • A Courageous Rescue, especially Chapter 3, intentionally incorporates ways for the player to use accessories to bypass the normal sequence, for instance skipping most of the middle levels so as to gain better stats from the later levels.
• Serrated Blade of Pain: The Briar Hacker is both a tool for cutting through briar and a weapon. It has the lowest Attack stat of any metal weapon, equal to that of the starter wooden blade.
• Shout-Out: The Goblin-Biter, a weapon that doubles the player's Attack when fighting goblins, is named after Biter in The Hobbit (one of the two swords the goblins feared, together with Beater).
• Skippable Boss: In Chapter 3 of A Courageous Rescue, the Gel Mother and Adder bosses can be skipped by using accessories to open the doors that would normally open when you defeat them.
• Spoiler Title: In A Courageous Rescue, will Tendry succeed in rescuing his countrymen? This is treated as a Foregone Conclusion since The Second Sky had already shown what happens.
• Story to Gameplay Ratio: Just as with DROD, the main holds have more gameplay than story, although usermade holds may vary. The gameplay will also usually take more time than the story, due to the difficulty of the puzzles.
• Superboss:
  • The Archivist in Tendry's Tale. You get a special ending for beating him, which was meant to require saving up the Hand Bomb to use on him. The developers didn't actually know whether or not it was possible to get stats high enough to defeat him by normal combat. (It is.)
  • First Patron fills this role in A Courageous Rescue. This time, he is fought on a thin ice bridge, so if Tendry tries to use the Hand Bomb on him, the result will not be in the player's favour.
• Super Drowning Skills: The only things that can swim are waterskippers and antlions (the latter because the sprite is based on DROD's waterskipper nest). Anything else — the player, monsters, other room elements — will be killed or destroyed when dropped into water, no matter how close dry land is.
• Three-Quarters View: Since the entire game is laid out on a grid, this is the art style most of the in-game entities and room features go with.
• Too Awesome to Use: The Hand Bomb in Tendry's Tale, which is a One-Hit Kill to all tiles immediately surrounding the player. At the point you get it, it's tempting to backtrack and use it to kill an Adder (which has a whopping 250 DEF, and you are unlikely to be able to hurt it by normal means at that point). This would let you get the Really Big Sword much earlier than you normally would.
• Unique Enemy: Rattlesnakes and adders were normal enemies in the main DROD games, but in the second half of Tendry's Tale, there is only one of each, and they guard important power-ups (the Pickaxe and the Grappling Hook respectively; the Grappling Hook is required to get the Really Big Sword).
• Unwinnable by Design: A staple of the magic tower genre. If you don't do well enough at optimising the order of fighting monsters, you will run out of resources and be unable to continue; players are expected to progress by making saves before tricky decisions and reloading when they have more information.
• Weapon of X-Slaying:
  • In Tendry's Tale, the Goblin-Biter and Wyrm Smiter give the player double Attack against goblins and serpents respectively.
  • A Courageous Rescue has the Roach Wrecker, which gives double Attack against roach queens and roach eggs. (Roach eggs have zero Attack but high Defense, so they can't hurt the player but they can block passages. Getting the sword allows the player to take them out much sooner.) The DROD RPG 2 engine also supports custom weaknesses, and corresponding "strong against X" weapons, for usermade holds.