Category: Accessible Games
Here it is, guys. Or here is another instance of what could have been a topic already.
I have gotten in to browser games. Throughout my travels, I've come across a fairly fun game called Sryth. It is accessible via the Apex, and is screen-reader friendly.
Basically, it is a role playing in which you craft yourself a hero and do various deeds.
And now your comments and questions.
Hi there,
I've been a Sryth player off and on for about...oh god, maybe five or six years now. The game has been fairly decent on the whole. I'm pretty impressed with the depth of writing and story, but that has waned lately. I have no real questions about the game, but I do have a comment to make.
For anyone aspiring to try this game: you will be able to play the game and get a good taste for it for absolutely free. The game is not viciously hard, and the depth of the scenarios will probably keep you hooked, if that's your thing. And here's that word, hooked. Once you get to a certain point, you won't have any adventures ana scenarios left, and it will be suggested that you buy an Adventurer's Guild subscription. This is quite cheap on the whole, and gives you access to the rest of the game. I don't generally object to this, but I think Sryth is dying.
In the last six months, I think there has been perhaps two large scenarios created. Typos are becoming more and more common. Similar phrasing patterns are also becoming more common. A supposedly Christmas-themed event called Frostbite has been "coming soon" for half a year now. An item called the Tome of Attainment has literally been promised for the better part of three and a half years. I truly feel like the guy who runs the game is getting low on ideas, or time, or both. This would be fine, except that there are people out there who aren't prepared to play the game unless there's new content. I, among many, am one of those; Srythi s definitely not a game you can truly -finish, but it's definitely a sort of game that you can be caught up on, a game where, once you hit a certain point, the only thing you can do is grind replayable scenarios over and over and over again. This is useful, sometimes, but incredibly dull, and I despise it.
If you go to the homepage, you'll see that the last few updates, posted May 14, are all for items or abilities or other in-game perks which have been live for a couple of years. For want of new update material, the GM, as he prefers to be called, is rehashing old stuff and trying to distract you from the fact that his game is going nowhere.
Before I go any further, I want to say this. I'm not bashing the man. We all have bad patches. We all have writer's block, get bogged down, or otherwise find ourselves unable to do what we set out to do. I don't mean to judge him harshly, and I'll be the first to applaud when good stuff keeps coming. I'm telling you all of this so you know two things. First, if you buy an Adventurer's Guild subscription and really go to town on the game's content, you may find yourself at a point where nothing new is left. Second, you're going to have to deal with a GM whose updates are infrequent, often delayed and starting to get a little repetitive. If you can get past these things, then I strongly urge you to try Sryth, as there's a great deal it can offer you...neat puzzles, tough combat, good storyline, nice items and abilities, random exploration, the whole nine yards. If you can't get past those things, though...well, it's best you know of them now, rather than find out after you spend your money and get to feeling cheated.
I've been playing for nine years because it's the only online game I've ever found that's been able to consistently keep my interest for te entire time I've played it. I do agree that the Christmas themed event should perhaps now be called Heatwave instead of Frostbite. LOL.
I did play the game a while. The reason I had to stop was mainly because I couldn't beat Blalak, and my school work has stopped me from continuing the game.
That's the other thing. If you're not upgraded to Adventurer's Guild status, then you're going to struggle rather badly with some of the challenges unless you roll a really good character to start with. It took me two solid hours of rolling till I got the stats I wanted. Even then, I remember first trying Sryth and giving up because there was a tarn rat that was 16+ to hit, at a level in the game where I had like 37 stamina and was going to die in four or five hits. For a beginner quest that gives you something like 16 experience and 50 gold, I thought it grossly unfair. It's not, but only because if you roll a good character and know where to get half-decent gear, you can stomp the living heck out of the early game. Of course, as stated before, Adventurer's guild makes it way easy, and that's the point.
Be warned, too, that if you do end up upgrading, there may still be quests and scenarios out of sync with how strong you ought to be; I remember being terribly annoyed that content was so often 18+ to hit for me, despite my having a good set of gear; I went on something of a rant a few years back on audiogames.net concerning how the GM was tailoring his game to those who donated a whole lot and/or won a bunch of his monthly contests and had uber gear to boost their melee and samina above the 300 mark.
Another gripe I've got, and this literally just got brought to light so I'm mentioning it while it's fresh.
I'm at a point where, except for one or two things, I'm entirely caught up on Sryth. My character is powerful, and aside from grinding there's little I can do. I suppose I could go get that shield I don't have, but...well, you'll see where I'm going with this. So anyway, I log on tonight and I see there's something new. Excited, I go and investigate. I get a little teaser of what's going on, some new fantastic story thread (fantastic in the sense that it's probably going to be a lot less than it's proclaimed) and then...wait for it..."return in seven days". Yup. The GM freaking loves doing this.
Giving you all a warning now, there are some mild spoilers ahead. Nothing that'll break the game, but you've been warned.
Still here? Okay, spoilers ahoy!
The GM's propensity for making us wait, purportedly because the NPC who introduced this newest detail needs to "take care of" some sort of business, annoys me to no end. I think it's combined with everything else, because alone it's not a huge deal. You know that shield I mentioned? It involves running a replayable scenario something like thirty-five or forty times. At the end of each run, you see the silhouette of a shield; for the first few days it gets clearer and clearer, but just when you're about to get it (or so you think), a number shows up in the image, and it starts at 1, goes up to 35 I believe...and only when it maxes do you get that shield. And then you have to spend experience leveling it up. Don't get me wrong, it's an awesome shield and if you're prepared to pop on once a day and do the annoying little scenario, I can see why he does it. But it irks hell out of me because it seems so...arbitrary. This is a scenario which you can only complete once every twenty-four hours, by the way.
Then there's the area called Rhaknar's Mad. This is probably the most creative part of Sryth overall...it's a big mazelike thing with puzzles involving gems, a moving statue, a bottle full of something cold, innumerable gears and cracked walls and iron dials...the list goes on. It gets a bit repetitive but it's a very neat idea. When released, you could only complete ne level of this maze every day. Why? I dunno, it's arbitrary, and never mind that in a roleplay sense, you should be discouraged from leaving, not discouraged from ploughing deeper in at a sitting. Anyway, there are currently forty levels of this place I believe...some levels take awhile to unlock, some are the work of eight or ten minutes. More daily grind which just makes me feel like I'm doing busywork. Busywork in a game is usually a bad thing.
There are literally dozens of scenarios where you have to "come back tomorrow" or "wait seven days" or some damn thing, and there's always some vague explanation about how things need to be prepared. It feels like the GM is releasing a little and trying to keep us interested; I suppose he's succeeding, up to a point anyway, but when I often feel a grim sense of triumph at literally just -seeing a new adventure go live...well, it's a pet peeve of mine. I'm mentioning all of this here, again, so you know what you're in for. Long waits for things, and then unexplained waits in order to finish things that are started. It all gets a bit much sometimes if you ask me. It also doesn't help that I honestly think he's getting slower as the years go by; I'm sure he's got his reasons, but still.