By Richard Goodness. Played with Chrome browser. Successfully won without hints.
TOMBs of Reschette is a self-proclaimed “Videogame About Fighting Monsters”.
It initially presents itself as if the fervent imagination of a 10-year old’s fantasy campaign was written out in prose by an adult. It gives all the cliches within the dungeon crawl a giant bear hug.
It’s got a straightforward Twine interface where you tromp through dungeon rooms clicking the standard “North”, “South”, “East”, “West” with items you take applying automatically in the appropriate places.
My first attempt lasted 10 turns. It led to an infection by TOMB Worms leading to destruction of every human life on the planet.
My second attempt led to:
You have defeated the Wompiru! You gain 9,000,000,000 XP and the Treasure of the TOMBs of Reschette: All of the Dubloons and Gems that you could ever possibly carry!
Also, the ceiling fell on me and I died. Game over, again.
At this point I was unsure if there’s any way to “win” and thought TOMBs might simply be a succession of amusing deaths; but once I started solving puzzles the game turned into something else.
(major spoilers below)
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While it is possible to kill enemies for XP, Dubloons, and Gems, those values are entirely meaningless and it is possible to win with 0 XP. There’s even a superfluous system for raising various statistics that (as far as I can tell) do nothing.
The successful route to winning involves giving the creatures peace. While the route is pretty simple once it’s clear combat is a bad idea, the fact the underlying puzzle is that combat is a bad idea made for a satisfying experience.
Renga in Blue 
Well hm, the first ending I got (after not many turns at all) seemed like a winning ending to me: kill the Wampryu, adopt the Wampajoey, raise it and live to old age. I guess you end up discovering that you yourself have also now become a Wampyru, but this didn’t seem like a terribly “losing” ending.
Anyway, I’ve replayed a bunch to explore the rest of the tombs. I’ve found three locked doors but no keys. What am I missing?
There’s something in the book in the library you need to use.
That will get you something that will then let you get one of the keys.
Hrm, I got the Clostridium Amulet, if that’s what you mean, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. Is there something else in the book besides the Toin Undeads scroll? Or is there something other to use it on besides the Zombapta?
There is a hint in the book about what to do with the amulet.
Thanks, that got me unstuck and I finally got to the actual winning ending. Huh, I wish the author had provided a walkthrough. My opinion of the game after finishing went up a couple points, but if you count the time spent searching/asking for hints then I went over the time limit. Not sure if that should affect my rating, hm.
Two factors:
1. Other than the amusing little procedurally generated thing that Kevan Davis did, I’ve never played a text-based dungeon crawler before — I don’t have any memories or habits associated with the genre.
2. The library was basically the second non-hallway room that I entered, where the druid’s book is.
I think that made it a hugely different experience for me, because it meant from the very beginning I was motivated to find noncombat solutions based off the druid’s book, rather than trying to fight.
Do you think you would have appreciated the game less if you’d gone for the puzzles straightaway? Or is it so inextricably in conversation with the genre that the subversion is appreciatable either way?
(Also, is the variable spelling of the wumperoo’s name a dungeon-crawler-related joke?)
I always assumed there were going to be some kind of puzzles, but in this sort of game they usually get integrated with combat (you battle X traditionally to find item Y, item Y helps you defeat Z, etc.)
I think I might have appreciated it less only in that the stats-are-totally-useless gag might have meant less had I not tried them out in the first place.
Wow, clearly I need to replay this one to find the peaceful path. I too found the adoption ending and thought that was the best I could do, although there were a couple of places I wasn’t able to enter, so I knew I’d missed something.
“(Also, is the variable spelling of the wumperoo’s name a dungeon-crawler-related joke?)”
There may well be an earlier example of this, but what comes to my mind is Baezl’bub (also known as He Whose Name Cannot Be Spelled Correctly), the final boss of the roguelike game POWDER.
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