Me and my friends, we would play together by each getting a character and then taking turns during combat moving each of our characters.
Comment on PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now
tal@lemmy.today 1 week agoRealmz was out about the same time as Spiderweb Software’s games (Exile series, later re-released as Avernum series). Both were popular RPGs for the Macintosh (though I believe both had Windows releases as well).
While I did play and enjoy Realmz back in the day, I personally preferred the Spiderweb Software games. More complicated interaction with the world, and I preferred the writing. Less-pretty, though the Avernum re-release was isometric and had new graphics. Have you ever tried them?
I don’t know if I can recommend them in 2025, but if you’re still enjoying Realmz, I figure that the Spiderweb Software stuff might also be something of interest.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 week ago
tal@lemmy.today 1 week ago
It looks like there were also a bunch of scenarios released for Realmz. I’m trying to remember…I definitely remember playing City of Bywater. I don’t know if I’ve played the other scenarios, though.
If you haven’t played them and can round them up, might be that you’ve only played about 7% of the content out for Realmz, if what you’re after is Realmz-like stuff. :-)
While new scenarios were released throughout the game’s history, also typically packed along with the game in the next Realmz release, the game ultimately ended up with 13 official scenarios:
- City Of Bywater (developed alongside Realmz by Tim Phillips)
I’ve definitely played this.
- Prelude To Pestilence (1995, Sean Sayrs)
- Assault On Giant Mountain (1995, Tim Phillips)
- Castle in The Clouds (1995, Jim Foley)
I seem to recall the above names, though I don’t remember the scenario content, if I did play them. Nothing after this rings a bell at all.
- Destroy The Necronomicon (1995, Tim Phillips)
- White Dragon (1996, Jim Foley)
- Grilochs Revenge (1997, Sean Sayrs)
- Twin Sands of Time (1999, Sean Sayrs)
- Trouble in the Sword Lands (1999, Pierre H. Vachon)
- Mithril Vault (1999, Tim Phillips)
- Half Truth (2000, Nicholas T. Tyacke)
- War in the Sword Lands (2000, Pierre H. Vachon)
- Wrath of the Mind Lords (2002, Pierre H. Vachon)
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’ve definitely played City of Bywater.
Prelude To Pestilence (1995, Sean Sayrs) Assault On Giant Mountain (1995, Tim Phillips) Castle in The Clouds (1995, Jim Foley)
Same. I also definitely played City of Bywater, and I know I had both Assault on Giant Mountain and Castle in The Clouds (this one was giants right?)
tal@lemmy.today 1 week ago
I’m stretching my memory too far. I remember the City of Bywater world map, but I can’t even remember the world maps for the other scenarios, if I indeed played them.
This abandonware site appears to have a Windows release:
www.myabandonware.com/game/realmz-bce
I have no idea what scenarios might be included, and I’m always a little leery about running binaries from random sites outside of a VM, so I don’t know if I should recommend using it, but it’s there. There are serial numbers to activate what looks like all the listed scenarios in a comment there, so maybe it comes with all of them.
tal@lemmy.today 1 week ago
Me and my friends, we would play together by each getting a character and then taking turns during combat moving each of our characters.
Hah! That’s some hardcore effort to make that game multiplayer!
I never tried those but if its vaguely like Realmz, I want to try it,
I mean, there were a bunch of RPGs in roughly that genre out in those years; IMHO, Realmz and the Exile series were the best out on the Mac.
goes poking around
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasoft
Hah! I didn’t know this. Back when Jeff Vogel — the Spiderweb Software guy — was just starting out, Fantasoft, the company that did Realmz, published the first three Exile games too.
goes through the rest of the list
I don’t think that anything else they published were RPGs, though I’ve played some of them.
icecreamtaco@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I got that bundle at 95% off and it took me 2 years to finish. It was awesome