Realmz is a shareware science-fantasy computer role-playing game for the Mac and Windows, from Fantasoft LLC. It is a "classic", top down "2D" cRPG (although underground dungeons are 3D), where you play a party of up to 6 characters of various castes (bezerkers, sorcerers, rogues, battlemages, etc.) and races (dwarf, gnome, cathoon, vampire, orc, etc.). The game's graphics are very nice, each character has a portrait on screen at all times with the character's name, stamina, and their skills levels (like number of attacks, spell points, etc.). Spiffy point-and-click buttons allow you to move through the many different screens, like the movement screen, item screen, character sheet, spell list, shop/trade screen, and the battle screen. A great characteristic of Realmz is that during combat (turn-based), the landscape map is zoomed in to allow greater freedom of movement, vast tactical and strategic choices (weapon switching, guarding, spell targeting, running away to fight another day, etc.), and enhanced battle thrill. Other characteristics of the game include customable music (i.e. can be modified to your own tastes, with numerous music files available on the net), user-friendly interface, full of sound effects, vast spell selection, wide range of equipment (from simple iron spikes to fantastic relics), and overall exciting cRPG fun. In fact, since it's debut in 1994, Realmz has remained an extremely popular game which has won numerous awards. That it has continued to evolve and improve since its first release, being endowed with better features (types of landscapes, more races, more castes, etc.) as years go by, is in good part the reason behind its maintained popularity (also because once you pay, you never need pay again for updates and improvements).
This is one shareware game that won't fade away.
Character creation is easy (point-and-click) and goes along the lines of true role-playing by allowing you to deal with the "nuts and bolts" of your characters' statistics (spell points, hit points, abilities, special abilities, etc.) instead of vague color bars. In the event that the stats of your characters do not entirely satisfy you, you can always make good use of the Character Editor with which you modify your characters to better suit your needs and tastes, or to simply "cheat" and beef them up in levels and equipment/magic items. You could even make use of characters created by other Realmzers, by simply downloading them from numerous sites around the Web and adding them into your characters folder.
Once your party is ready, you can then adventure in this vast world, completing heroic quests, bravely squaring off wits and might against powerful beings (both mortal and of the netherworld), and face danger at every turn, all the while accumulating wealth, experience, and various items (weaponry, armor, magic items, etc.). Character growth is a major part of the game, and to that effect the Realmz consist of many lands whose locales range from quiet fields to arid and hostile deserts, from tranquil inns to demon-infested dungeons. These numerous lands are populated by many kinds of folk, from the goodly-two-boots to the foulest of evil, as well as by strange creatures, vile monsters, and fantastic beings. In other words, Realmz constitutes a perfect breeding place for legendary heroes, infamous vilains and mythical gods. The stuff that sagas and epics are made of.
The game application of Realmz is a "scenario driver", meaning that it requires scenarios to run (note however that each such scenario constitutes an individual adventure/game by itself!). Included with Realmz is the introductory adventure "City of Bywater", which you can complete after paying the registration fee for Realmz. Additional "official" scenarios produced by Fantasoft can be installed to Realmz by simply dropping them in the scenarios folder. Each of these you can try out once you have paid for Realmz, allowing you to decide whether you like what you see before paying for the registration of the scenario you are previewing (and like Realmz, any updates/improvements to these scenarios are free after you registered them).
The following "official" Fantasoft scenarios are currently available:
Assault on Giant
Mountain [AoGM]
Castle in the Clouds [CitC]
City of Bywater [CoB]
Destroy the
Necronomicon [DtN]
Griloch's Revenge [GR]
Half Truth [HT]
Mithril Vault [MV]
Prelude to Pestilence [PtP]
Search for the White
Dragon
[WD]
Trouble in the Sword Lands [TiSL]
Twin Sands of Time [TSoT]
War in the Sword Lands [WiSL]
Wrath of the Mind Lords [WoML]
Some of these official scenarios are tied together to form a larger story or saga:
PtP + GR = The Griloch Cycle
CitC + WD = The White Dragon Cycle
DtN + MV = The Morbius Cycle
TiSL + WiSL + WoML = The Sword Lands Trilogy
Not enough information for you? Then go right away to links that will send you to numerous Realmz sites or grab official Fantasoft Realmz scenarios here.
Realmz and Divinity are © and ® products of Fantasoft LLC and Tim Phillips.
