This is the most completely realized zoo among the Entries in Event Two. Play this game, admire its detail and polish, and then consider that it was written in about two weeks.
The map is dense and diverse. There are places that are quiet; there are places that are loud; there are places that are too loud. One side of the zoo is well-monitored and structured; moving toward the other end of the map, things get wilder and scarier. There is no shortage of things to do, but there is nothing to accomplish, but there is no feeling that nothing is being accomplished. The constraint of the game having no ending more or less disappears, so effectively does this game create the Sense of Place in IF that I am forever seeking to perfect.
Formless has done an excellent job of pandering to me. The game perfectly executes the double-layered thing I love about "museum games" (like Robin & Orchid), providing an enthralling sensory experience as well as an optional interpretive experience. It has dinosaurs. (It has a terrestrial ammonite that I can pet, which is pandering on top of pandering.) It has a Borgesian title. It has so much worldbuilding. The level of worldbuilding approaches unseemliness. It is well that Formless is anonymous, because polite society does not look kindly on this kind of smart, careful, self-indulgent, Ryan Veeder-indulgent worldbuilding.
But dinosaurs and Borges and worldbuilding are superficial pandering vectors. Formless has gone further, and taken pains to pander to the feelings of alienation, disillusionment, and anxiety roiling at the core of the Veedrian aesthetic. The visitor to the Menke Zoological Park and Research Center is perversely fascinated by gigantic, terrifying fossils. He hates noise and crowds. He sneaks into planetariums. He cannot relate to people—but I can relate to him, because he is me. Therefore I am forced to award "Gaia, Živa, Jarilo" 20 points out of 20.