back


|
 |
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.
|
 |
 |
|
Zonetown
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 
|
|
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.
|

|
  
 
 |