Watched the trailer and... i don't get it...

I already own all the DROD games from the developers but I'm going to buy them from here too. They are really nice puzzle games that have to be supported.

What you have to know about DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale is, that it plays a bit different than the other DROD games. The enemies won't move and attack you. It's like in the game Desktop Dungeons where you start a battle when you touch an enemy which stands fixed on a place. If you win or loose depends on your skills like health, strength and so on (like in a RPG).

Wow, just not much love...

I own the other DRODs that GOG has available and am a completionist. Wishlisted! Thanks for the release, and to echo others, the strong week of fine releases.

Edit: the punctuation was a bit hyperbolic

What is the order to play them in?

I just picked up the other GOG title in the series right before the Summer Sale, I think, and haven't yet played it. That first game is DROD 1+2+3, so that order seems pretty self explanatory. They are listed as the same genre as this release - I'm not sure if this is more-or-less a standalone in regards to story or should be played in a specific order against the others. As a non-Steam user, I also wouldn't have any ideas about others in the franchise not yet here.

Can someone else chime in for ShadowWulfe?

Chronologically, the story runs DROD 4, 1, 2, 3, 5. DROD 4 is a prequel set a long way before 1, so don't feel the need to do it strictly in that order if you only have the first three.

Difficulty-wise I'd suggest 2 and/or 4, 1, 3, 5. The even numbered games are a better introduction, while 3 and 5 are aimed at more experienced players. The first game is moderate difficulty overall, but has an uneven difficulty curve and doesn't do the teaching thing as well because of its age. It was the only level set available in the beginning, long before the level editor was created, and it misses a few lessons which have been learned since. The plot of DROD 1 can be summed up in a couple of sentences, so you're not missing the story if you jump into 2.

Playing them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 works too. It's how all the long-time fans have played them, anyway. :) And there's plenty of help if you get stuck.

DROD RPG is kind of its own thing. Gameplay is more like an old game called Tower of the Sorcerer rather than the other DROD games, and the plot is a side story with a different protagonist.

There's a demo (first four levels) available here. Below comments are based on playing through the demo.

The game is different than most dungeon crawlers in that, besides not being random at all and monsters not moving (and at least in the demo levels there being only one form of attack), there's a ton of backtracking -- to minimize HP loss you want to get to all of the "power ups" that you can without fighting the harder monsters (going around rather than through if possible), and then go back to get the items you missed once you've toughened up a bit (and even then if you can skip monsters you may want to). This is conceptually not any different than something like M&M where tougher creatures prevent you from going certain places until you get enough XP/gear to take them out, but it feels different due to the density (easy + medium + hard monsters may all be in the same room blocking different paths), due to there not actually being any XP in this game (and not lots of gear either -- most of what you find is attack bonuses and health potions), and due to how quickly and significantly those "power ups" change outcomes. It should be noted that the game includes some features to minimize the annoyance that backtracking would otherwise cause (such as ctrl+direction to zip right through entire screens with a clear path).

Those differences are of course in addition to this game being more puzzle-oriented than most dungeon crawlers. But unlike the kinds of puzzles you find in too many dungeon crawlers (stupid, stupid "puzzles" -- like random switches, no way to determine what does what), the puzzles in this game can for the most part be figured out rather than being trial and error. There's a certain amount of exploration as well, not just normal exploration of finding out where rooms/paths are, but exploration of the puzzles themselves - a puzzle may extend over many rooms, and there's no signs attached to pieces of the puzzle saying "this is part of puzzle #N", so you end up figuring those things out as you go. (There are some places where you have to take a "leap of faith" on incomplete information, such as walking through one-way "force arrow" tiles and over trapdoors, but that didn't cause problems in the demo levels and it may be that the levels are intentionally designed to not punish you for making "mistakes" where you couldn't have obtained the information needed to avoid it.)

You get coin from killing monsters (which is then used to get through "toll gates"), and you can go back to previous levels if you wish to kill monsters you initially skipped but now want their coin.

One thing I didn't like is the secrets rooms/paths hiding behind crumbly walls (walls you can knock down) -- specifically the "thin" crumbly walls because visually it's nearly impossible to distinguish them from normal thin walls. Another is the "story fragments" and "flashbacks" that happen along the way -- they just seem to be pretty stupid and have little to nothing to do with what you're actually doing. Also, the mini-map has problems -- if I try to use the mini-map in the corner, it doesn't map the mouse cursor to the correct location when I click on it. The pop-up mini-map works properly, though even when the mini-map's working as designed, it's really crude -- it would be much better if you could pan across screens/"rooms" rather than having to view each screen in disconnected fashion, and it's dumb that you can't info-click items you can see on the map.

Even if there's not as much value/$ here as the DROD 1+2+3 bundle, I found the demo to be worth the time it took to play it (and I think DROD RPG has one of the coolest menu screens I've seen in any game, but like the game it requires some discovery -- Hint #1: Move that light around. Hint #2: Watch how they move.).

Hint #3: Click. :)

DROD RPG on GOG appears to be outdated, because few usermade holds cannot be imported into it. After reading Caravel forums, it looks like the newest version is 1.2.0.58 (GOG has version 1.2.0.55).

Also, I'm hearing that the newest version of DROD 1 and 2 is 2.0.17. GOG has version 2.0.16. However, I'm not sure if there are any DROD 2.0 holds which can be imported only to 2.0.17 (importing them to DROD 3 or newer should always work).

DROD 3 (3.3.0.96) appears to be the newest, because I don't have any information regarding the newer versions.

Please check for patches and update if necessary.