Soldak sends in a Demon War review at Gamercast; no score but it's very positive:

After spending countless hours saving towns, clearing dungeons and questing I stopped to evaluate exactly what makes Din’s Curse and its expansion Demon War so addictive, and there’s a certain desire in gamers to finish a game, it’s the same reason that many gamers have hoarding natures; there is a need of completion. Din’s Curse fulfils that need of achievement again, and again, so much so that as soon as you start a new town, you just want to complete it and finish all of the possible quests.

Soldak sends in a new review of Din's Curse: Demon War at Armchair General, with a score of 90%:

As described above, Din’s Curse is unique in that you not only have to kill a wide assortment of creatures below, but you also have to actually save the NPCs above, by providing them food, water, money, and weapons, or by physically defending them from attack, disease, and a host of other problems as they arise.

When an NPC says he’s are starving, he really is starving and may die if they don’t get food, or money to buy food, soon. Players can talk to an NPC, inspect the NPC’s equipment, and give the NPC food from your inventory. The same can be done to provide them with money donations, or better weapons and armor, keeping them better equipped to face random monster invasions into town. If the three primary quest givers in town (apothecary, steward, and warmaster) perish, the whole town is lost, and players must continue the quest for redemption in a new town.

Michael Anderson has penned a review of Din's Curse: Demon War at Gear Diary:

As I mentioned, the game is just a blast to play in short or long sessions, as there is a wide array of activities to do. Some will take only a few minutes, others can take hours to fully complete.

The first addition in Demon War is a new class – Demon Hunter. This specialized class uses ‘demonic powers’ to deal out loads of damage, and presents an interesting change to the gameplay dynamic. But the most interesting gameplay remains taking on hybrid classes – rather than three specializations you only get two, but they can come from any class.

One of the coolest things (for me anyway) in Din’s Curse was the dynamic world. I remember at first thinking this was a world where everyone just stood there and never had to eat or go to the bathroom … and then finding out that they have starved to death or been over-run by monsters because you didn’t make it back in time! That dynamic world has been improved, with more chances for things to happen when you are in the dungeons that require you to head back to town – you can actually fail quests because of this!

A scoreless review, yet positive in tone, for this game has been penned by No High Scores.
A snip from the conclusion:

The knock that Din’s Curse gets is in its graphics and animations. It’s a fair complaint as there is no doubt that games like Torchlight look a hell of a lot better when it comes to character models and spell effects. But I feel that after a while the graphics in a game like this sort of dissolve into the background and I focus more on what I’m doing than what the graphics look like. And there is no question, at all, that I’d rather play Din’s Curse than Torchlight. Not that Torchlight is a bad game but Din’s Curse has proved significantly more valuable. It’s really not even close. This is one game that I don’t plan on shelving anytime soon. That makes two in the past month along with Panzer Corps. Who said the summer was slow?

GamersNexus reviewed Soldak's Din's Curse: Demon War rating it with a 7.6.

Things do tend to slow down once you've worked-up your favorite character: there isn't a wide enough array of ultra-powerful monsters for the late-game, and quests can become burdensome if you accept too many at once (which is often suggested, as ignoring them can damage the town or its inhabitants). Din's Curse randomizes more than just dungeons, though - so you should be able to generate a few towns if things go poorly for the first one (different vendors are available in each, as well as different environs and dungeons/cave complexes). Still, despite all the dynanicism, townsfolk can become obnoxious and overly-needy, occasionally to the point where you must abandon a dungeon to go feed someone, destroy portals, or other diverting tasks. I had a few quests that seemed to result in core NPCs disappearing at random (making it impossible to finish their quests), and had one major crash - bugs aside, though, and the game is amazing.

There's a review of Din's Curse: Demon War at No High Scores written by Bill Abner, who some might recognise from his past work on magazines and major sites. There's no score but in this snip, Bill explains how he likes Demon War much more than Torchlight:

The knock that Din’s Curse gets is in its graphics and animations. It’s a fair complaint as there is no doubt that games like Torchlight look a hell of a lot better when it comes to character models and spell effects. But I feel that after a while the graphics in a game like this sort of dissolve into the background and I focus more on what I’m doing than what the graphics look like. And there is no question, at all, that I’d rather play Din’s Curse than Torchlight. Not that Torchlight is a bad game but Din’s Curse has proved significantly more valuable. It’s really not even close.

Soldak's Din's Curse: Demon War has been reviewed at RPGFan, with a score of 80%:

Each town really does live and breathe in Din's Curse, and perhaps even more importantly, each dungeon. When you set foot in your first dungeon you'll probably see a major difference right away between Din's Curse and Torchlight or Diablo or other hack and slashers like this – there is an entire ecosystem at play here. The enemies aren't just waiting for you to kill them. In many cases they are fighting each other, gaining their own experience and getting stronger themselves! Even the townsfolk can manage to fend off a stray demon or two.

In this sense, Din's Curse provides the player with a true sense of urgency. While you need to take time to gather loot, prep in the town, and take care of the occasional starving NPC, at the same time every second you spend doing one of those things is a second you are giving evil to grow stronger.

Din's Curse: Demon War is now availble on Impulse. Here is a quick summary of all the features that Deom War adds to Din's Curse:

• Play the Demon Hunter class (now 196 total class combinations)
• Fight many new demons (3 new species, 8 new types, 40 new variants)
• Solve tons of new quests
• Help the NPCs as they interact much more with the world and each other
• Experience many more world modifiers
• Explore new environments
• Interact with the world in new ways
• Survive the Demon War
• Basically experience a lot more of what makes Din's Curse incredibly unique

RPG Codex has a review of both Din's Curse and the expansion, Demon War, focusing mostly on Din's Curse as the expansion is more of the same good gameplay.  I'll quote from the review about Din's Curse first, and then go on to quote from the review about Demon War. First Din's Curse:

Din's Curse is unique in how much of the game is procedurally generated, and how it evolves dynamically. In this game, being told that 'bad guys are starting an uprising' will mean bad guys will actually rise up into your town instead of obediently waiting to be stopped in the nick of time like almost every other RPG. It's fantastic: the 'Diablo with dungeons that fight back' moniker is wholly justified. It is not only the bad guys who get up to stuff (besides invasion, they also lay curses which give debuffs until you take the quest to solve it, produce machines to make dungeons harder, block the gates, fight amongst themselves, etc.) the good guys can also head off to do the quests themselves, turn on each other, or betray the town in any number of ways.

Then about Demon War:

Din's Curse has an expansion: Demon War. It fittingly old-school fashion, it is a 'more-of-the-same' sort of thing. A new class (Demon hunter), more monsters, new quests, more NPC behavior, etc. (even Soldak's blurb says "Basically experience a lot more of what makes Din's Curse incredibly unique"). The extra bits are fun, although not game-changing (they are also well-balanced, which is a refreshing change from the plague of overpowered goodies DLCs that do the rounds in the mainstream). If you enjoy Din's Curse, Demon War is worth a look; if you are not a fan, the expansion is not going to change your mind.

And finally, a snip from the conclusion:

Din's curse manages to nail the fundamentals of the genre whilst extending it in a new an innovative way. The basics of the game-play, although not perfect, are solid, balanced and, most importantly, fun.

Soldak writes in about an review at Gametactics for Din's Curse: Demon War. The score is 8/10 and here's a snip:

Demon War adds a lot more content to an already pretty impressive and unique game. There’s even more interactions with the NPCs in world around them, adding even more to the dynamic aspect of each town in the game. There are even more options for creating your character including another class with 3 specialties and a plethora of character and world advanced options. The new enemies and environments are just icing on the cake and you can really tell the people at Soldak are still putting in a lot of time and effort into their game. If you have the original Din’s Curse then this expansion is a must buy and if you haven’t tried it out yet but are interested I would recommend trying out the demo for sure.

Soldak sends in this review of Demon War ar LeetNeet, with a score of 9/10:

The combat is standard to the genre. You have a hotkey-based skill bar on the bottom of the screen, and you can use them in combat by pressing the number keys, as well as the normal attack based on your weapon. Dungeons have things like traps and environmental effects. There's naturally lots of treasure to find, but you're pretty limited when it comes to inventory space, so you can't pick up everything you find unless you keep making trips back to the shops. The game also gets substantially more difficult as you play, even on the default settings. The game can also be played with friends in the co-op mode, and it's a lot of fun to play with the difficulty settings and try to save the towns under ridiculous conditions.

Soldak sends word their Demon War expansion for Din's Curse is on sale for 50% off at GamersGate for the PC and Mac. You'll need the original game, of course.

Soldak sends in some new reviews for their game(s) Din's Curse and Din's Curse: Demon War.

• 411mania - 7.5/10
• Examiner.com
• GameDwellers - 4/5
• GameFront - 80%
• Square-Go - 4/5

A snip from the GameFront article:

Monsters aren’t the only dangers that NPCs face — you must also valiantly protect them from the dangers of starvation and debt. I had one NPC that kept going broke every few minutes. Time and time again, I would give him money to get him out of the red, until I started to believe he had a gambling problem. Whether this was just random algorithms converging in an amusing way or intended game behavior, it actually added depth to the character.

To add to the dynamism of the game — and to further prove that the NPCs are busybodies — townsfolk will occasionally fight each other. I couldn’t understand why, or how to stop them, but as the game went on, I was slowly losing townsfolk through attrition as they engaged in deadly quarrels.

This dynamism is what makes Din’s Curse addictive. You always want to complete one more quest, save one more townsperson, or explore one more dungeon level, because you know time is of the essence. The game conveys a sense of urgency absent from most other games with artificial time limits that have you succeed “just in time.”

Din's Curse and Demon War have hit v1.024, with a new general bug and balance patch released.

Soldak sent over a bunch of news mostly related to Din's Curse: Demon War, so I'll collect it all here. First, their three full games are on sale at Impulse for 50% off - this doesn't include the Demon War expansion, but you can grab the Din's Curse main game on sale and then add the expansion.

A site called I-Luv-Games has a review - no score but it all sounds positive:

The experience is unique in that everything, from the towns to the dungeons, characters and side quests, are randomly and dynamically generated every single time you play a new game.  Not only are the dungeons and quests randomly generated, but things that are going on in the world itself are constantly changing and evolving.   The perils you’ll face are different every time you play.  Outside the dungeons and on the surface of the world, townsfolk will rebel, traitors will turn against you, people may die of starvation, while others succumb to treachery.

Another review at Diehard Game Fan with a rating of "Good Game"

The real factor that sets this game apart is it’s dynamically generated gameplay. I know I’ve mentioned this before but it is a strong component of the game that makes it unique and helps make up for some of its presentation flaws. The simpler graphics and sound aren’t anything groundbreaking and does add some charm to the game. I used to be a huge fan of RPGs but as time went on, I found I had less and less time to spend on a lengthy story. Din’s Curse does a pretty good job of taking the RPG style of game play and making it more digestible in byte sized components. The random level system is great for this and the almost “Stage Style” nature of the Towns makes it easy to get into a game for a bit, complete a town, then take a break and come back later for some more. You don’t feel like you’re abandoning your characters and you don’t have to try to remember what you were doing last time you played it. Unlike Diablo, you’re not going to be playing the same two dozen quests every time you start a new game either. Yes there is some repetition and similarities in quests but there’s enough variety to make it less noticeable. Demon War also adds some options to engage Town People in combat so if you really want you can just go completely Chaotic Evil and slaughter everyone instead of saving them.

Finally, Indie Game News has an interview.

Soldak's Steven Peeler has been interviewed at Indie RPGs about their approach in general, although I've filed it under Demon War because several of the questions obviously relate to their latest game:

Thanks, Von Paulus.

Soldak has officially released v1.023 patch to Din's Curse. There are a lot of little tweaks and fixes to the game. Go here for a more detailed list of all of the changes.

There's a review of Soldak's Din's Curse: Demon War at Diehard Gamefan. The rating is "good" and here's a snip:

Primary amongst these differences is the time based nature of many of the game’s quests. Most quests have some level of time limit in play. Some may essentially be infinite where you have to find some object buried deep in the dungeon, while others may require more urgent action, such as finding a person from within the dungeon. In most RPGs, a rescue mission will generally sit and wait for the player to arrive to initiate some sort of story sequence. In Din’s Curse, if you sit and wait around, the person you’re trying to rescue will likely be killed. Your choices also affect how the town people you’re trying to save will treat you. As you complete more quests for a particular person they may give you free items or discounts on weapons and armor. Completing more quests also will open up more optional quests as people trust you more. You’ll also be helping the townspeople become more powerful in the event that the town starts to become overrun by the monsters in the area.

Soldak has released v1.023 for Din's Curse and Demon War, offering a bunch of miscellaneous fixes and balancing adjustments. They also have a new trailer to check out.

Soldak's Din's Curse expansion, Demon War, has been reviewed at Rock, Paper, Shotgun in one of their Wot I Think articles. The verdict? Better than Torchlight:

Town attacks are the purest example of Din’s Curse dynamism. Screw up, or just get a run of bad luck, and monsters will come bursting out of the ground to butcher as many townspeople as they can. It turns out that those incidental NPCs have a purpose after all- in an attack, they provide much-needed fodder before the monsters attempt to slaughter vital townsfolk, like vendors and people with a head on their shoulders (read: quest-givers). One lovely little feature is that you can actually give arms and armour to each and every member of the town, so if you’re in a particularly miserable community that’s forced to repel monster attacks at every turn, you can try and equip the townsfolk. What then do you do when you’re one dungeon level away from the big bad that’s organising these attacks, and you get the message that the town is under attack? Do you press on, or fall back?

It’s a beautiful system because it’s just so emotive. Each town is a self-contained story. On average, each one might only take 25 minutes to save, but as well as the dungeon tileset and quests being different for each one, you also get to select the parameters of the next town you go to. Tougher monsters, more active NPCs and more active monsters are all options, and the result is that each town takes on a life of its own.

Tales of the Rampant Coyote has some quick impressions from the recently released Din's Curse: Demon War.

The townspeople are probably going to be the most immediately noticeable difference in the game, if you are playing with a character without Demon Hunter skills.  I’m still getting a grip on understanding these guys. They are a much bigger part of the game. Occasionally, in the past, they’d fight (and die) in attacks on the town, or get sick and die due to a plague or magical attack or whatever. And you’d have to check around town to see if there were some optional quests being offered by regular townsfolk instead of just the main quest-givers and vendors near the town center.

Now they are a lot more active, with personality types and happiness levels and relationships with each other and stuff like that. In practice, unfortunately, that meant I have had to go around town a lot giving handouts to keep them from starving.

I can’t say I fully understand everything going on in the towns after just a few hours of play of Demon War.  The end effect has been that the towns are a lot busier and the NPCs play a much bigger role in what’s going on. I’ve seen married townsfolk get divorces, get so hungry or destitute that they start stealing from other NPCs. I’ve even had one woman in town become so grieved over the death of a loved one (even though I avenged the murder) that she turn traitor, poisoned the water supply (spiking the cost of water & drink in town), and when discovered fled into the dungeon to join forces with the bad guys. And then I was sent to go kill her. All in a day’s work.

Soldak has released an updated and combined Din Curse / Demo War demo. Since the new expansion obviously requires the base game, the demo combines content from the two titles in order to show off Demon War. If like the idea of someone trying to do something different with hack-and-slashers, this is well worth a look. 135Mb and allows you to play to level 6.

Soldak sent news the lengthy beta for Din's Curse: Demon War is over and the expansion is now available:

Dallas, Texas, February 22, 2011 - Soldak Entertainment today announced the availability of Din's Curse: Demon War.

Din's Curse: Demon War is the first expansion for the unique action RPG Din's Curse. Din's Curse is a single player and co-op multiplayer action RPG for Windows and Mac PCs with 141 class combinations (196 with the expansion), infinite number of dynamically generated towns, real consequences, and a dynamic, evolving world.

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

The demons of Aleria are furious! After the 4th Great War and necromancer Ciglio's death, the undead horde has been causing utter chaos, attacking everything that moves... even demons. Demonkind were quite happy when Serina, a human city, was overrun, but that was before thousands of human zombies poured into Kraval, slaughtering the huge demon city. Thus began the Demon War. Demons of all kinds are fighting back. They're hunting down and killing any undead they find. Oh, and they blame the humans for this entire mess. For spite, they razed Serina to the ground even though it was already deserted.

As a servant of the mighty Din, it's your responsibility to safeguard humans from danger. This was a hard task before. Do you have what it takes to save humankind from the Demon War?

Features:

Play the Demon Hunter class (now 196 total class combinations)
Fight many new demons (3 new species, 8 new types, 40 new variants)
Solve tons of new quests
Help the NPCs as they interact much more with the world and each other
Experience many more world modifiers
Explore new environments
Interact with the world in new ways
Survive the Demon War
Basically experience a lot more of what makes Din's Curse incredibly unique

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

Soldak has posted some new monsters for the Demon War expansion to Din's Curse and the patching has hit v1.022.

Soldak has kicked up a Din's Curse: Demon War beta patch, advancing the pre-release game to v1.020.  Steven Peeler notes "This patch has a lot more fixes and balance changes. We are now at the stage where we are consistently fixing more bugs than are getting reported. :)", which presumably mwans the release is getting close.

Din's Curse: Demon War has a new v1.019 (and I think we missed v1.018) beta patch, with a slew of fixes and tweaks.

Din's Curse: Demon War has a v1.017 beta patch available that fixes a laundry list of items and adds additional polish, such as improving some textures.

Soldak has released new Din's Curse: Demon War screens at the official site.

Soldak has kicked up a v1.015 patch for Din's Curse and Demon Wars. Word is "This patch has some pretty big balance changes, mostly armor and resistance related, and a number of fixes as usual".

Soldak has kicked up v1.014 of Din's Curse: Demon War.  Word is "this patch fixes a bunch of small bugs, balances some things, tweaks the UI, improves some of the graphics, and even adds a new Less Stress world setup option".

Soldak updates their Demon War area with details on the new class in the expansion - the Demon Hunter.  Head over for information on the three specialties and the 30 new skills.

A new beta patch has been released for Din's Curse/Demon War as progres on the expansion continues.  Files here and notes here.

You can now preorder Din's Curse: Demon War for $8.99. If you preorder the game you get it at a lower price and recieve beta access. There's also a 30 day money back guarantee. Here's the official press release:

Dallas, Texas, December 30, 2010 - Pre-orders of Din's Curse: Demon War expansion are now available (Windows & Mac) at http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Demon-War.html

Gamers who pre-order the expansion will receive full access to the latest beta build, a reduced pre-order price of only $8.99, the opportunity to give Soldak feedback on our forums which can influence the game, and of course, the final version when it becomes available.

Din's Curse: Demon War is the first expansion for the unique action RPG Din's Curse. Din's Curse is a single player and co-op multiplayer action RPG for Windows and Mac PCs with 141 class combinations (196 with the expansion), infinite number of dynamically generated towns, real consequences, and a dynamic, evolving world.

The demons of Aleria are furious! After the 4th Great War and necromancer Ciglio's death, the undead horde has been causing utter chaos, attacking everything that moves... even demons. Demonkind were quite happy when Serina, a human city, was overrun, but that was before thousands of human zombies poured into Kraval, slaughtering the huge demon city. Thus began the Demon War. Demons of all kinds are fighting back. They're hunting down and killing any undead they find. Oh, and they blame the humans for this entire mess. For spite, they razed Serina to the ground even though it was already deserted.

As a servant of the mighty Din, it's your responsibility to safeguard humans from danger. This was a hard task before. Do you have what it takes to save humankind from the Demon War?

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


Features:

* Play the Demon Hunter class (now 196 total class combinations)
* Fight many new demons (3 new species, 8 new types, 40 new variants)
* Solve tons of new quests
* Help the NPCs as they interact much more with the world and each other
* Experience many more world modifiers
* Explore new environments
* Interact with the world in new ways
* Survive the Demon War
* Basically experience a lot more of what makes Din's Curse incredibly unique

[Update] Added the full press release, sent through from Soldak.

Two more monster profiles for Din's Curse: Demon War are available at the Soldak site.

Soldak has kicked up three monsters at the official site for their Din's Curse expansion, Demon War.  Head over to meet the Rylor, Rylor Bull and Winged Rylor.

The first expansion for Din's Curse has been announced by Soldak, it is named Demon War and is scheduled to be released this year. The expansion offers the following features:

• Play the Demon Hunter class (now 196 total class combinations)
• Fight many new demons (3 new species, 8 new types, 40 new variants)
• Solve tons of new quests
• Help the NPCs as they interact much more with the world and each other
• Experience many more world modifiers
• Explore new environments
• Interact with the world in new ways
• Survive the Demon War
• Basically experience a lot more of what makes Din's Curse incredibly unique