Zyll

The Good
I found your website recently and thought I would join.

Marshal Linder and I wrote this game back in 1984 while working for IBM. We wrote it during off hours and submitted through the employee submissions program. From what I recall, it was one of only seven games accepted by IBM. We had a blast during those days!

The Bad
Having to keep the core program under 64K in order to fit into the PC Jr's memory. Those were the days ...

The Bottom Line
A game ahead of it's time. Now it's an oldie but goldie for some! 8)

The Good
Zyll is all things to all adventure gamers. That sounds like a cliche, but it's the honest truth:

• It's interactive fiction because it's completely textual with verbose descriptions
• It's a role-playing game because you can define your character's attributes before you play
• It's got infinite replayability because the items and monsters are in different locations in every new game you start
• It's multiplayer--in realtime!

It's unreal and I can't believe it hasn't been duplicated before or since on home computers. It was a MUD before MUDs existed.

The Bad
Once you've completed the game, you have a basic idea of how to win each time. This is true of all games, but Zyll could've extended replayability a bit more by rearranging the locations and/or landmarks each time.

The Bottom Line
Zyll is such a unique concept that everyone should try it at least once.

The Good
Very much ahead of it's time. It incorporated real-time events (walking through a doorway or down a hall went much quicker than walking along a path in a wide open field), multiplayer support (cooperative or competitive), and it was random enough to be replayed again and again.

The Bad
The actions are executed by single keystrokes. Player 2's menu is fine, but player 1's menu is designed for the older keyboards, with the F1-F10 keys down the left hand side. This takes some getting used to for playing on today's keyboards with the function keys along the top.

The Bottom Line
This game is great to play by yourself or with another person (or even with a group of people). Lots of fun exploring, and great room descriptions. One I've come back to again and again.

The Good
This game created tension between me and my friend growing up... we would play competitively to beat the clock. One game ended with him punching me in frustration.

And this is a text adventure game. Amazing.

Great pacing (how the monsters would stay hidden for the first 10 minutes or so), randomness (placement of treasure, monsters, and even the player), and map.

The Bad
I wish it were bigger. I wish every text game were like this. Or even that ONE other text game were like this.

The Bottom Line
One of a kind.