Sindome is an attempt at a cyberpunk-themed RP-enforced MUD, but fell short for me in a number of ways.
First, the theme itself hits many of the notes of cyberpunk but misses the mood entirely. There are world echoes of gritty happenings juxtaposed against silly pun-named stores and graffiti with references to modern pop-culture and memes. All in all it feels like a satire of sci-fi in the vein of Robocop or Idiocracy than a traditional cyberpunk setting.
Right away you write a background justifying why you have the skills you picked up in chargen, which is par for the course in an RP MUD, but the game turns around and upends the background you just wrote by declaring basic knowledge of the tools and *syntax* used IC knowledge. Documentation is sparse. The result is that your mechanic character has to write a background explaining how they learned to repair things, and then enter the world without any idea of how to repair things or what tools they would use to repair them - by design.
Sindome says this is intentional because they hold roleplay as more important than code. Reading the posts on the forum, you are directed to seek out employment from other players as a means to learn the syntax and get money to pay for clothes and the tools they need. There exist a code-based methods for getting money, however, such as SHI.
At SHI you must type 'work' every six and a half minutes or else you'll be thrown out. You earn 250 credits per real-life hour. Alcoholic beverages start at 90 credits and go up to 300. Clothing starts in the hundreds and goes into the thousands. Armor starts in the thousands and goes in the tens of thousands. Tech-items start in the upper-thousands and go into the hundreds of thousands. The other method of earning money is delivering delivering packages to NPCs, not players, at a maximum of between three and five packages per RL day. Packages give approximately 100-200 credits each.
There is mechanical support for shoplifting from stores, but when I attempted it I received an OOC prompt that said shoplifting had been disabled.
Most of the players I met were quasi-AFK grinding at SHI for money. The bars are often desolate, and when I did happen to find people in a bar they told me that they were not hiring and told me to work for SHI. There is an in-game mail system you can use to reach out but I found that most players did not reply. I received one message, and it was to tell me that they could not hire me because they were contracted to an NPC group.
I attempted to join the NPC group because my skill set matched theirs, but staff did not animate them or acknowledge the @note stating I had been seeking employment. According to posts on the forums, getting staff to animate an NPC can take several real-life hours.
Despite the gritty echoes of danger you'll see when walking around, the main city is fairly safe. There are no aggressive NPCs on the streets. Additionally, you gain experience not from using your skills or from roleplaying, but from logging online hours. This means that if you work at SHI to make money you're gaining experience that can be used to raise combat skills the entire time.
During my time at Sindome I encountered a number of bugs, including one chargen bug that had been reported at least a year ago by another new player asking for help on the forums. Another was a website bug not properly displaying archetype descriptions which was reported during an October 2015 town hall but, as of yet, has not been fixed. Another bug I encountered in game caused your bank account to be charged when it said you should be credited funds, causing my new character to immediately owe thousands in debt.
Use the following form to submit your comment. Please keep in mind these guidelines: