Realms of the Haunting

About Realms of the Haunting

Realms of the Haunting was made by Gremlin Interactive and first published by Interplay for MS-DOS, in the UK in December 1996 and in North America in March 1997. It is a hybrid of its era: Gremlin's True3D engine for exploring and fighting in first person, point-and-click puzzle solving, and about two hours of full-motion video filmed with live actors against a blue screen and set into rendered rooms of the game. Funbox Media now sells it on Steam and GOG, running in DOSBox.

You play Adam Randall, a young Englishman who comes home to Cornwall for the funeral of his estranged father, the pastor of Helston. A priest who calls himself his father's friend hands him a box of broken seals, and nightmares of a dark house follow. The house is real, and it stands over a place sealed in the beginning by the Seven Seals, the centre of all realms and the balance between good and evil. Inside, a psychic woman, Rebecca Trevisard, helps him, and the house turns out to hold doors into other worlds.

You walk the mansion and the realms beyond it freely in real-time 3D, which set it apart from the click-on-a-hotspot adventures of its day. You click on objects to examine them or take them, read the letters, journals and scrolls that tell much of the story, solve puzzles, and fight what attacks you with a sword, a pistol, a shotgun and a magic scepter. The store promises bizarre universes, from the modern mansion to a medieval, surreal world full of monsters.

The horror is old-fashioned and atmospheric: dark wallpapered corridors, crypts of skeletons and chains, a night courtyard with bodies hanging from a tree, and a story of demons and an approaching apocalypse rather than jumpscares. Critics of the time praised its cinematics and its mix of adventure and shooting; players today note the dated controls and 1990s acting, and that its look-alike corridors make it easy to get lost without a map. It suits players curious about horror from the PC's CD-ROM era and fans of The 7th Guest, Phantasmagoria or Harvester.

How to play Realms of the Haunting

1. Buy it on Steam (Windows) or GOG (Windows, Mac and Linux); both run the original game in DOSBox.
2. Explore the mansion in first person and pick up everything you can.
3. Read the letters, journals and scrolls you find; much of the story and many clues are in them.
4. Examine and use items to solve the puzzles that block your way.
5. Fight off the creatures that attack with the weapons you find, from a sword to a shotgun and a magic scepter.
6. Watch the video scenes; they carry the story between the realms.

Tips

• Save often and in more than one slot; it is a long game from 1996.
• There is no map and many corridors look alike, so draw your own or note landmarks as you go.
• Check rooms of the mansion again after new events; doors and objects change.
• On GOG you can switch between the UK and US versions in GOG Galaxy's language option; the US release was patched with combat difficulty options and key remapping.

Questions