At the entrance to the desert area of the game a cobra demands jewels. If Rook attempts to Give all of his gems to this snake, it will halt execution with a programming error. It attempts to jump to a label named :Go, but #Go is a reserved word in ZZT for movement, and so the engine errors out on a #Go statement with no direction. The only way past the snake without ?zapping is to attempt to pay him all your gems while carrying no gems at all.
In the throne room, the Captain fails to zap his :touch label after Rook tells him what the prisoner said, and because of this, the initial check for the flag Torture and initial message will always execute, the check to see if you have the Garlic will never execute, and the Captain will never move away from the passage you have to enter.
In the underground vault, the object, which is supposed to open the vault, again attempts to jump to a label named :Go, and thus triggers ERR: Bad direction and halts execution, requiring Rook to zap the vault door out of the way himself.
Lastly, the final board of the game contains a hidden anti-editing/anti-ZZT rant. This board is the corrupted last board of a Super Locked world, meaning it will crash ZZT if you load it, and thus ironically cannot be read without the use of an external editor or viewer made years after its release.
(Report entered by Dr. Dos, original report by The Green Herring based on bugs mentioned in the game's Closer Look article)
Dos sez: Game rules though, and you should still play it.
Nadir's screenshot post about Sivion made me remember that I hadn't actually completed it despite starting a few times. Generally remembering it in a good light, I took a crack at it again this evening.
Sivion has a few neat short parts, but one the whole, it's a bad game.
I started off pretty quickly, although it occurred to me that I just remembered all of the beginning trades and talking sequences from the times I first tried the game in 2004. What begins as an interesting quest to stock up on arrows and gems eventually becomes deadlock without cheating. It is so fucking easy to miss some necessary items and areas and yet keep bumbling on until their absence makes the game unwinnable. In one or two parts, buggy objects prohibit you from finishing without zapping. Many boss objects talk to you in blue message boxes while you're shooting them, which sucks because pressing shift and arrows in a message box closes it immediately. The game, which is superlocked, states in the editor that it has been beta tested and has no errors. >:(
Besides the obvious stuff, like having to input a password (which requires knowledge of some other game) to start playing, and the dark+invisible mazes, trading puzzles are often very obscure. There is no indication that some random conversation option is the only way to get a key, and that afterwards you'll never be able to get it again. Most conversations are displayed as flashy marquee text at the bottom of the screen, and two conversations have a tendency to overlap, making both unreadable. (Best example of this being the prison.) Every forest area is a ping-pong path maze begging to be zapped through. Most bosses, when shot, wait for one idle before zapping labels, meaning you can hammer a boss with most of your bullets and only deal one hit.
The game feels like it's split into two bits: the first area which is generally crappier but more interesting, and the second area which has somewhat tighter programming but less going on.
I do like some bits in Sivion, like the glinting, shiny gold in the mines, and the torture room. I also like how if you revisit the forum a new band will be playing. And the djinn store, that part is great. But god damn if it isn't one of the most tedious ZZT games I have ever played.
Boy, this game is amazing! I can't describe it only with my words! IT's so long that took me a life to complete it. It's always various, well designed and challenging. The quests are never ripetitive and there are also bosses!
This game is amazing! It's a 1995 product, but it's fantastic. The story is pretty simple: you are Rook, a nobleman exiled from Gwin. After the death of your father, the mayor has taken your house and throw you out from the city. This game is an Adventure-RPG with a pretty good graphic and good sounds and music. The best part of the game is the longevity. It's LOOOONG. IT has MANY sidequests and it can take occupied also the best RPG player for at least a month!
Download it now!
Graphic-8 Sound-8 Challenge-10 Gameplay-10 Longevity-10
Overall: 10
Final Score: (10/2)=5
