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Lab
  
X spot
From the
Ministry of
Thought
What is reality? Find out in the...
Z   o   n   e     o   f     Z   u   n   e   


Credits:
Created by Darlene Waddington and Jeff Hilbers      Art Design and Graphics by Jeff Hilbers


  
Where Conspiracies Collide
"The Zone of Zune" is the story of "Bill", a half-starved, insane homeless youth with no memory and no identity. Bill lives in Zonetown, a weird, ever-shifting world filled with mutants, mystery and rampant paranoia. Life is rough for anyone in the Zone, but it's a real bitch for Bill.

By controlling Bill's actions, the player experiences life from his highly abstracted point of view and explores the strange world of Zune where very few questions are answered without new ones being raised. As in life, there are a variety of endings to this man's experience, but not all of them are "fair" or based on Bill's actions alone.

This easy-to-play, but hard-to-fathom adventure takes traditional gaming elements such as puzzles, arcades and item-inventory strategies and twists them in ways designed to make the player question both the Zone of Zune's reality and the "reality" of interactivity in general.
  

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Ministry of Thought
The Structure Of Chaos
LabZonetown is a world that defies not only the normal structures and conventions of society, but even the laws of physics. This dark environment has familiar faces and landmarks, but they shift and change, almost as if Bill is skipping between parallel universes or viewing reality through the haze of psychoactive drugs.

The story unfolds in a nonlinear fashion. Imagine taking each characters' story, writing each one down on a piece of paper, tearing the sheets of paper, then then shuffling them like a deck of cards. The sequence of events is not important. Some scenes are fleeting and mysterious, only hinting at a larger story, a broader reality, outside of Bill's view. Some scenes may repeat, thus creating a sense of deja vu for Bill. Some scenes may never be seen during the course of playing the entire game. And although Bill cannot control the flow of reality swirling around him, he can alter it through his actions, with certain global events carrying over from scene to scene.
  

The Sound Of Insanity

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Bill's story is told entirely without dialogue. When characters speak, the sounds they emit are expressive sounds without language. The details are not important; their tone and gestures tell Bill all he needs to know.

More detailed information comes from bits of print: written notes, signs in the city, tattered pages from a dumpster, etc. This information suggests that any number of conspiracies might be unfolding behind the scenes. Some of the many theories are: we're brainwashed; we're guinea pigs; we're really dead; we're really aliens; the air and food is laced with drugs; subliminal messages control our minds; aliens have taken over Earth; Earth has a secret colony on Mars; Mars has a secret colony on Earth; the end of the world is coming, and the end of the world has already occured
  

Happy And
Unhappy Endings
Bill's story can be resolved in a variety of ways: Undignified Death; Wealth; Love; Martyrdom; Power, and Truth. Use your imagination to decide which endings are the happy ones.
  
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