This is great, just a bunch of good ideas, neat characters, dangerous tools, story hooks and world building.
Benking
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Entries have been meaningfully expanded from the transcription up on 100r.co with helpful additional thoughts and touching illustrations. There’s added context for the start and end of their journey both in the “small” sense of crossing an ocean, as well as the grander projects of their work and home. In most ways this is not a pleasant journey, but the lovely illustrations of Pino and their adventures plus notations of daily progress blunt even the most harrowing moments. It’s really excellent reading, and I’m grateful for the extra work Hundred Rabbits has put into this edition.
I recall that one of the earlier Donsol editions had something like "levels." By successfully playing through a deck of dungeon rooms the deck was reshuffled and the difficulty increased by +1 ATK for every enemy, but buffing the player with +1 HP. It let the player feel like they'd advanced a little bit after completing a deck, and although the challenge was still all RNG, it was always nice to get a few rooms through the tougher level. I'd be entertained to see that mechanic added to the Assembly/NES version if you had the time and inclination or if it felt worthwhile to anyone else.
I'm looking for a list of keyboard controls for the NES version of Donsol. There's nothing obvious in the Readme or the instruction booklet apart from the NES controller key. The emulator I'm using (Mensen) allows for some intuitive substitutions on a PS4 Dual Shock controller. An inclusion of keyboard controls in the instruction booklet would be ideal, but maybe it's the emulator that determines the keyboard controls? FWIW "J" on the keyboard is "B" on the NES, and "K" converts to the NES "A" in the Mensen emulator I'm using.
If you select LOAD, then click on the small CLOCK icon you'll be able to RESTORE from earlier moments within a save file. This may allow you to progress past this point from a previous location. I've used it once or twice after encountering bugs on round 6 of Beta testing. Starting from a new save also smooths out some hiccups, but requires that you restart from the beginning of the game. I also did this a couple of times.