I started playing Sryth today and only about 20min into the game, I'm digging this quite a bit. I'm still learning everything, but the interface is so fantastic, you can learn just about anything right on the screen with just a click. It's not hard to see why the kickstarter was funded for such an amount. One thing of note, the free account only gets ONE character to play. When I started today, there was an option to purchase a life-time membership for the "upgraded account" at a cost of $10, so I figured why the heck not. It said that it was on sale and the normal price to upgrade was $30, which imo seemed a bit expensive for the type of game it is. I mean it's great for a text based RPG, but I don't know if I would have ever considered paying that much. Aside from granting more character slots, upgrading gives you some special benefits like starting gold and experience, special items, and access to exclusive adventures and other parts of the game, though I don't know how extensive all of that is.
Ok, back my first play session.
I chose to randomly roll my character and was pretty happy with the results for stats, of which there are several. You can roll as much as you like until you get stats that feel comfortable for the type of character you want to make. Each stat is explained when you click on the info icon, it tells you how the mechanics work within the game. I also selected four starting skills (not sure if you gain more as you level up) and went with Arcana (spell casting), Lore (knowing of things and stuff), Weaponry (combat related), and Woodsmanship (wilderness based). Because my Arcana was high enough I was able to select a starting school of magic and I show Gating, which are spells related to teleporting and magical travel. It sounded cool and different, so I thought why the heck not.
After all was said and done my character looked like this:
After finishing up my character and selecting skills, I was thrown right into the game. The intro is pretty normal for a text based game, it sets you up with the whys and hows. One of the things I really like is how some of the text is underlined, meaning it has lore/info within the game. You can click on the underlined text and a separate window will open, giving the player specific information. In the image below, I clicked on the location and it gave me the info on the surrounding area.
There was also an option to open up the map, which was also pretty awesome. I dig the that it is hex-based.
To get the player into the thick of things, there is a starting encounter that appears to be normal for all new characters. I made a second character just to see and everything started off in the same fashion. To continue, after an initial encounter, you will find yourself in the starting town. Once you arrive, there are several options from which you can choose. One thing to note, at the top of the screen you can see
[SAFE] in green. You can only save your games in an area/screen that is denoted as safe and you should always save before quitting or else you'll start back from the last save point when you log back into the game.
Here's a screen of how it looks:
For fun, I decided to click on the options of "
Approach a man who seems to be watching you...". The man said he had an item he thought I might be interested in and asked if I would like to see it. I said that I would and he presented me with what appeared to be a magic sword. He offered to sell it to me for 100 gp, which seemed pretty cheap, so I bought it, <shrug> why not. I have a sneaking suspicion there might be more to this than just a magic sword but I guess we'll have to see further into the game.
A couple of other aspects that I thought were cool, you can have both
Mounts and
Residence in the game. I'll have to try this out and see how much it adds to the game, it's a nifty concept.
