I was wondering if anyone had ever mentioned this game here, and since this thread exists, I might as well talk about it.
I've been playing Sryth on and off for about a year and a half; after playing for free for a while I went ahead and spent the $20 for "Adventurer's Guild" membership, which has been worth it for me, as I quite enjoy the game. It's pretty easy to play casually or get really deeply into for a while, then leave and come back.
The only other game I know of that's similar is Kingdom of Loathing, which I haven't played enough to make a detailed comparison with. Sryth is story-driven and not light and humorous (though there are certainly some humorous quests and tongue in cheek stuff scattered throughout); it's an epic fantasy tale with you as the hero.
It does play like an online gamebook (of the Fighting Fantasy or Sorcery! sort, but with more features); browser-based, almost entirely mouse-driven (it's not like a Zork game, it's all clicking on menus), all text, only graphics that I can think of are the background image and the combat window health bars, and there are some dungeons with a little onscreen minimap that you can navigate by clicking. It's quite well written, the interface is simple and works well, the game world and history are interesting, and the developer adds new content somewhat infrequently but when he does it's worth the wait, and the existing content will already take you months to play through. It could be called an MMORPG in that it is online and others are playing at the same time, and there are some re-spawning "big boss" fights that multiple players can participate in, but (unless I missed it) there's no in-game chat or guilds or parties. It's a solo adventure with occasional areas that you can see what other people are doing, mainly in those boss fights (Lord Killsalot did 108 damage with his Shimmering Silver Longsword before he had to withdraw, for example). I think Kingdom of Loathing is similar in that regard.
There is an extensive wiki for those that feel the need to plan things out for their characters or want to know what the consequences of various quests are; there were a few times where I was concerned about what might happen in a particular circumstance and looked it up. There's an excellent starter's guide that tries to be as spoiler free as possible that is quite helpful. A nice feature about Sryth is that almost any quest you are on can be canceled out of at almost any point and you can replay it later if you feel like you might have made a bad choice or if you aren't strong enough yet. Your character has many skills and powers to learn and level, lots of weapons and armor to find, as well as unique equipment from quests. If you die, you restart from your last save point; there are "Runes of Life" that get exhausted when you die, but since it only costs 16xp to get another one, I've never not had a Rune of Life available. If you have none left and die, you are marked with a "Mark of Death" which you have to go through some shenanigans to remove.
The game does have a lot of content for those who play for free; of course if you pay to join there is a lot more content. For those who join there is a system of "Adventurer Tokens" that function as coins that let you purchase special things; you do have the option to pay more and purchase tokens at any time, but I've found that my character has amassed more than enough tokens just by playing to access all the special stuff you can get with them; plus the Gamemaster has done several special events where he essentially gifted players with extra tokens. So the option to buy them exists but isn't forced upon you; you can definitely access all the special stuff if you are a diligent adventurer.
Since it's all text, and I believe the whole game is pretty much the work of one person, you may sometimes come across a misspelling or punctuation error; there's a link to report anything like that to the Gamemaster. As an aside, the only thing I've noticed that kind of irks me ever so slightly after playing for so long is the frequency that the Gamemaster has used the word "smirk" - the characters you meet do a lot of smirking! Sometimes I feel they were actually making a different expression, perhaps just smiling. To me smirking indicates a sarcastic or self-satisfied sort of close lipped grin, one side of the mouth twisted up. But I digress! That's my one and only minor issue with the writing, I'm irked by smirks, and it's VERY minor. I enjoy the author's style and think he's done a great job of world building, and written a lot of entertaining, engrossing quests. I'm pretty attached to my character.
Sryth is also something you can play during downtime or lunchbreak at work, or at least something I've often played under those circumstances!
So to sum up, I'll just say I enjoy it, I'm still playing it and looking forward to the new content and the continuation of some of the storylines, and I don't regret spending the $20.
