Realm of Fantasy

Realm of Fantasy
◄Eamon adventure #270►
Author	Jared Davis
Released	November 2006
EDX number	21
Native format	PC DOS
File	Eamon 270 - Realm of Fantasy (EDX standalone).zip

Realm of Fantasy is an Eamon adventure written by Jared Davis for the Eamon Deluxe system and released in November 2006.

Background

Realm of Fantasy—the second adventure designed specifically for Eamon Deluxe—was written by Jared Davis and submitted to the EAG in 2006. At this point, Frank Black had suspended support for Eamon Deluxe and—apart from an announcement on the EAG blog—the adventure languished, unreviewed, for six years. Upon Black's renewed interest in supporting Eamon Deluxe in 2012, Realm of Fantasy was given a large overhaul, with a number of enhancements made and features added.

The game itself draws on a diverse range of sources, including material and characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, The Princess Bride, and Super Mario Bros.

Premise

Joslyn, a new member of the Guild of Free Adventurers, has taken note of your talent and requests that you assist him in finding a long-lost friend outside of the Main Hall. The friend, Oscar, fell down a hole in the ground years before and you must make your way down the hole in search of him. The hole magically leads to a fantastical realm which must be explored to complete the task of finding Oscar.

Walkthrough

Davis's 44-room adventure is mostly linear and contains no hidden chambers (and only two locked doors), so you're unlikely to get lost or stuck — just progress from room to room, battle the baddies, accumulate allies, and collect all the artifacts.

Adventure map by Huw Williams, 2022

Yellow Brick Road

Your adventure begins in the long, low tunnel that you just climbed into.

1. Collect the magic wand and go south (or down) into the big drop; the White Rabbit will join you.
2. At the bottom, dispatch the Wicked Witch of the East; a house will fall on her and you can collect her silver shoes. Inside the house is the friendly Dorothy. (Remove her from the house and she'll join you.)
3. Go north to the yellow brick road and follow it west.
4. You'll see a Blue Pavilion to the north: inside are the March Hare and Hatta the Hatter.
5. Go west into the corn field, fight the crows, and meet the Scarecrow.
6. Return to the yellow brick road and continue west. Near the cottage to the south you'll meet the Tin Woodman and some aggressive Fighting Trees.
7. Next on the road are some kalidahs and the Cowardly Lion.
8. Farther west you'll spot a rose bush; it's really the cruel witch Mombi in disguise. Dispatch her and collect the vial of depetrifier.
9. Go north into the farmhouse and you'll find a jack-o'-lantern that turns out to be Jack Pumpkinhead and a stone statue of a boy. Use the depetrifier on the statue to free the boy Tip.
10. Return to the road and continue west.
11. Fight the Poppy Sprites in the poppy field.
12. Continue west into the Tulgey Wood and fight the Jabberwock.
13. Go west once more and the road ends in an open field. To the south is camped an army of Scoodlers, and to the north a house occupied by the Duchess and her cook. Neither encounter is necessary, but if you wish for any reason to return quickly to the beginning of the adventure, the crack in the house will magically take you there.
14. Continue west.

Kingdom of Florin

1. You've arrived outside a tall stone tower where the friendly Inigo Montoya and Fezzik meet you. To the west is only a locked inn, so head south.
2. Dispatch the ROUSes (Rodents of Unusual Size) in the Fire Swamp.
3. Go south again to reach Miracle Max's house. Using request, buy the three items he's selling: a healing potion, a hardcover novel (Outsiders from Oz by Davis himself), and a "Miracle Pill".
4. Return north and enter the tower.
5. The door leading up the stairs is locked, so instead descend into the "Zoo of Death", fighting rabid squirrels (level 1), snakes (level 2), bears (level 3), tigers (level 4), and the Albino.
6. At the very bottom is Count Rugen, a villain who's torturing the brave hero Westley. Slay Rugen, take his silver key, and free Westley; the Miracle Pill restores him to health.
7. Return to the main floor of the tower and use Rugen's key to open the door and ascend.
8. Attack the villainous Prince Humperdinck; Buttercup will join your party.
9. Exit west through the picture window.

Emerald City and the Mushroom Kingdom

You've arrived in the beautiful Emerald City (and can't go back since the window you climbed through from the tower is now too high to reach).

1. Go south, then down into the city's pipes to meet the friendly plumbers Mario and Luigi who'll help you fight the troublesome Goombas.
2. Return to the city and go west through the Yellow Town.
3. West again and you'll be at the palace of the Queen of Hearts; defeat the queen and her pack of cards.
4. Go west twice more and you'll at the first tier of a tall castle, guarded by Bowser.
5. Ascend the upper tiers of the castle, meeting the friendly Toad (tier 2) and the Wicked Witch of the West (top tier).
6. Go up once more to reach the roof and find Princess Peach.
7. Return to the Emerald City.
8. Go north into the Palace where you'll find a huge floating head and a locked emerald door leading further in. Once you're dispatched the head, inventory Princess Peach and you'll see she's carrying an emerald key; request it from her, open the door, and go north.
9. In the final room you're greeted by the Wizard of Oz himself — real name, Oscar Diggs, the very person you set out to find! He declines your invitation to return home, saying he's finally become a real wizard and prefers to stay where he is.
10. Exit any direction but south and you'll return to the Main Hall, your adventure a success.

Reviews

EAG webmaster Matthew Clark was apparently initially not a fan of the adventure when it was first created in 2006. When the adventure was updated in 2012, Luke Hewitt initially awarded it a score of 4 in his review, praising its surreal humor and craziness but expressing some dissatisfaction with the game's lack of descriptions and the huge number of companions, as well as the fact that several pieces of special programming such as the shop apparently didn't work. When Frank Black revised the program, however, Hewitt raised his rating to reflect the changes, and the composite review score from Hewitt and Black is 5.5.

Location

The adventurer initially reaches the Realm through a hole in the ground outside the Main Hall, and magically returns home from the Wizard's chamber in Emerald City. In correspondence with Huw Williams in 2022, Davis revealed that "the Realm is an ever-changing manifestation of creations we've imagined", and that it would be totally different if the adventurer returned for a second adventure. Though he never made a sequel, Davis said it would have included Vermicious Knids and had Link from Legend of Zelda as a companion.

Trivia

Davis's Outsiders from Oz

• Realm of Fantasy was the first Eamon Deluxe adventure to become publicly available in 2012, although the main package containing several more adventure sets had been available to beta testers previously. A stand-alone package containing Realm of Fantasy was initially released by Black to the public.
• After Black's changes to the program in 2012, Realm of Fantasy was one of only a few Eamon titles to use colored text as part of its atmosphere, emphasizing descriptions of places such as the Emerald City by printing text in corresponding colors. A similar technique is used in the critically acclaimed 2004 Zcode interactive fiction Photopia by Adam Cadre.
• The name Joslyn comes from Frank Joslyn Baum, the son of Oz creator L. Frank Baum and author of several Oz stories.
• When the adventurer encounters Dorothy and Toto, Dorothy is wearing the silver shoes described in the novel The Wizard of Oz rather than the ruby slippers from the 1939 MGM film version. References to the Oz books don't stop with Wonderful Wizard and include characters such as Tip from Return to Oz whom the player finds turned into a statue by the witch Mombi, a fate he narrowly avoids in the novel.
• The game includes a shop which sells among several other items a book described as Outsiders from Oz by Jared Davis, a novel which Davis himself published. Frank Black reviewed the novel in the Eamon online blog in 2012, describing it as a lighthearted fantasy.
• Almost all the descriptions and appearances of the Super Mario characters are taken from the original Super Mario Bros. published by Nintendo for the NES in 1985. The sole exception is Toad who, though he appeared in the original game to inform Mario that the princess was in another castle, did not receive the name Toad until the 1987 release of Super Mario Brothers 2 where Toad was a playable character along with Mario, his brother Luigi, and Princess Peach, much as they all appear in Realm of Fantasy.

External links

• The Royal Blog of Oz: Realm of Fantasy
• Eamon Adventurer's Guild Library Master List
• The Interactive Fiction Database: Realm of Fantasy
• Interactive Fiction Reviews: Realm of Fantasy