An Interactive Fiction Game by Amy Kerns
“This is the story of a man named Nick. Just your average joe trying to make ends meet. Unfortunately, ends didn’t meet very well, so Nick had to move back in with his father while he looked for a second job. Nick found himself rather eager to procure his own place again, not just to save his father from the hassle, but also because dad was really starting to get him spooked. Ever since his parents’ divorce, Nick noticed his father becoming quieter and more reclusive, living as a hermit. At night, Nick could hear weird noises coming from his father’s bedroom. Of course, his father denied all strange behavior and insisted everything was fine…”
– Introduction to Realm of Obsidian
“The court officers are very ugly and nasty. There’s an ogre, an orc, and a clay golem that acts as a court reporter. Yeah, it’s crazy, huh? They work in the Court of The Worm. I’ve seldom heard the orc and the ogre speak, and I think the clay golem is mute. The golem was actually created and animated from clay. Probably Xodak’s doing. It’s almost like they’re robots… or maybe just hypnotized idiots. Yeah, that sounds about right. Ugly, hypnotized idiots.”
– Wyatt of Wiolence
Realm of Obsidian is a game of interactive fiction (also known as a text adventure), featuring sound and music. Realm of Obsidian will only run on Windows (98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista, and Windows 7). It features over a dozen characters, more than 30 items to hold in your inventory, 8 songs, and over 50 sound effects.
Playing the character of Nick, you discover that your father has been involved in black magic and mysticism, and he is now missing. Nick meets many strange characters (some of them deadly) during his adventure, and starts to become aware of the one responsible for his father’s absence. Realm of Obsidian is about exploration, wits and survival. Oh yes, and dark humor.
This game has no graphics other than the ones created in your mind when playing it.
Warning: This game depicts scenes of violence, horror and gore. It’s not for everyone.
Realm of Obsidian has some degree of high difficulty. Save often!
Click here for some reviews of Realm of Obsidian
DOWNLOADS
Realm of Obsidian v0.63, all sounds and music (16.8 MB)
Realm of Obsidian v0.63, no sounds or music (860 K)
Realm of Obsidian v0.63, for use with Linux running the Wine emulator (16.8 MB)
Realm of Obsidian v0.63, for use with Linux running the Wine emulator, no sounds or music (860 K)
Amethyst Games 
Hi Amy!
My friend Jason, a very skilled IF author using TAB, invited me to the TAB IF Creator discussion group, where I saw your post about beta testing your comp game. I’d enjoy having a go at it and providing hopefully some helpful feedback. I recently collected some useful links on beta testing practices.
Regards from Sweden
Hi Omar,
You forgot to leave an email for me to send the download link and such. But I believe you are the new member on the TAB forum, so I sent an email to that member. You’d probably get that email before checking for a response on this page. In the event this wasn’t you, just reply back or leave me an email (the address is on my “About Amy” page). In any case, thanks for signing up as a beta tester!
I tried both versions on a Mac OS X using Wine, without success. The Linux/Wine version looked okay except no response occurred when I pressed Return after typing a command.
Any thoughts of making RoO playable on a Mac?
Thanks!
-Howard
First of all, the program that Realm of Obsidian runs in, and was created with (called TAB), only runs on Windows. To run independent of a particular platform, I would have to rewrite the entire program on Inform 7 or some other platform. I may end up doing that in the future, but not anytime soon. Sorry.
I don’t use the Mac or Linux at all, but I do have a few ideas for you.
Have you tried using Winetricks? It’s a script that can help with programs that use DLLs (like TAB does). I found it here:
http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks
Last but not least, what about Parallels Desktop for the Mac? I haven’t gotten around to posting this video in my blog, but here you go. Omar got my game to run beautifully using this emulator.
I hope this helps!
Winetricks looks a bit complicated but I will try to figure it out. Thanks!
You’re welcome, and good luck! 🙂
How do you make a stand-alone game that doesn’t require a player to have the player? I mean if I wanted someone else to play on his computer, does he have to have the player or editor?
First off, my apologies for the very late response. I haven’t been on here in over two years, and the email address that my notifications were going to has long since expired. It’s fixed now, though. As for the answer to your question, I don’t know what language you’re working with. With Inform, you can use Bundlemonkey: http://www.trenchcoatsoft.com/projects.html With TAB (such as I used for Realm of Obsidian), you can rename your story file (or code file) to autorun.tab, and rename TAB_runner.exe to whatever filename you wish (just keep the .exe). Let me know if you have any further questions, but I do hope you’ve found the answer already. I’d feel bad that you had to wait over half a year just to hear my advice. Good luck in any case!