Ratings and Reviews by Nomad

Just in case you stumble across this database entry and wonder what kind of game it is: It's an interpreter for the Funge-98 programming language. An interesting abuse of the Z-machine, but nothing for a romantic evening at the fireplace with just you and your laptop. Three stars because everything else would be unfair.

You're swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and are suddenly sucked underwater by a "whirlpool". Down there you can swim around without worrying about a lack of oxygen, and get killed without warning when you enter certain rooms, or enter other rooms with certain items in inventory.

Quill games, or memory-restricted games with a two-word parser in general, can have a certain charme. "Sea of Zirun" doesn't. It doesn't even have an "examine" command. The underwater setting with clams and seaweed and turtles and all is nice, but everything else is plain annoying.

This game would probably have much more reviews if it was playable in a browser. Anyway, it starts out as a simple fantasy gamebook with a linear flow. Writing is actually good - the game world is presented from the perspective of the protagonist, meaning there's no lengthy explanations of everything, because the protagonist *knows* what kind of social system etc. he's living in. I like that. Next up, a horror element creeps in, almost lovecraftian. Then, a sudden change of perspective which I'm not going to spoil. After that, the game was over relatively quickly.

I played it through once only - so far. I'm pretty sure the game is not as linear as it seemed to me. There's a score at the end indicating I could have performed far better - means I maybe only scratched the surface. Three stars so far, for the interesting setting and plot. Probably a fourth star the next time I play it. If you like gamebooks you should definitively try it.