When there's something strange in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call? Heroine Dusk! Clint Bellanger serves up this demo of the as-yet uncompleted retro turnbased RPG adventure game about a young serf who is the only one willing to take up arms when her countryside is shrouded in a perpetual darkness that brings forth monsters. Created for the OneGameAMonth project and written entirely in javascript, it's a great little gem with decidedly old-school leanings that we'd love to see even more of.

Use [WASD] or click the screen to move and turn around, and click the "i" icon to open your inventory and check your status as well as the map displayed on the left if you get lost. (If the keyboard controls aren't working for you, try FireFox, or play on the official site.) Enemies will pop up randomly as you explore, and you'll duke it out in turns by hitting the sword icon, or the running man icon if you want to flee. Certain spells can also be used while exploring if you open your stat screen and click the appropriate icon, should you find your path blocked. You don't gain experience and level up, however, so Heroine Dusk is as much about fighting strategically as it is exploring. Hidden throughout the maps are various chests with items that will increase your stats, or even grant you new spells and abilities, so make sure you check everywhere. You'll still want to do a little monster slaying, though, since they drop the gold you need to buy the really fancy stuff from the village stores. Note, however, that the game will automatically save your progress, and if you die you can refresh the screen to start over from the last place you rested at the expense of all the gold you carried.

One word to describe Heroine Dusk would be grind-tastic, since you really do need all the equipment you can get and enemies drop gold in the most miserly fashion possible. Trust me when I say you are going to want to scour every square of the map to find treasure to make your life easier. On the other hand, other words you might use to describe it are "classic", "gorgeous" and "addictive". It's simple in a way that lets you jump right into it, eschewing heavy storytelling or complicated mechanics for a straight-forward interface and gameplay design that streamlines everything about it. Battles require thought and planning, and there's something wonderfully engaging about it from the getgo thanks to the lack of melodrama or drawn-out cutscenes... so you'll probably be sad when it's all over, even though it's still a decent chunk of adventuring. Still, Clint has said he plans to keep working on the game if it gets a warm reception, and the game is open source too, so be sure to tell him if you want more (like a "load game" button?), and in the meantime... you have a world to save!

Play Heroine Dusk (Demo)