This game just missed the mark, except for some fatal bugs, and terrible spelling, this game could have probably been a winner.
It starts out on top of a tree where you slowly remember you ate some sort of mushroom (called a pepper bolette) and ended up in this world. This is not your crazy world of mushroom houses, floating eyeballs, and a Bur-Lynn wall, instead it's basically like you standard zzt adventure setting, and the mushroom idea lets it get away with more.
The story is limited and sparce, but it is filled with colourful characters who all speak with poor grammer and spelling. There were some "dialects" and accents used to make speech interesting, but it was hard to discern from actual grammatical error. Also Zephyre Syx needs to learn that footnote marks are placed at the ends of words.
The most novel innovation is the backpack engine,which itself is a board accesable from any game board through a clever use of clones and passages. (Lots of passages!) Initially, the first time I used this engine (on the board I learned about it) I was returned to a board that I had not seen yet, and was stuck when I entered a passage and couldn't move due to a purple door. The system looks impressive, but other than the brief overview of its functions at the beginning of the game, there is nothing in the way of help, and it is not very easy to figure out how the whole thing works.
The game is played at a faster speed than normal, and Zephyre Syx uses this feature well for gameplay, and also for speeding up the process of duplicator/clone engines (which generally make noises throughout the game.) Very adventureesqe, with a good amount of combat, both melee and shooting. One of my gripes about gameplay is that supposed solid walls were sometimes made of water which could be shot through.
Graphically the game has a good command of STK. There are plenty of fades and a lot of smudginess that will remind you of a Herc game. The font is a bit of a mystery, it seems it could have been used better. The smilies have been changed, which is good, and some chars were made specifically for the backpack engine, but the letters were hard on the eyes, dispite the fact only a few were changes (the s really was not pretty) and enemies still looked like pi and omega.
What this game needs is a good overhaul. Or Zephyre Syx can move on, which would be fine with me, as this game is a good showing of things to come.
