BRIEF: The Fantasy Worlds of Tamrak (1993)

 

A backstory to make Norman's head explode.

        

The Fantasy Worlds of Tamrak

United States

Independently developed and published

Released 1993 for DOS

Date Started: 11 November 2025

Unplayable because: Unregistered demo is limited in gameplay 

           

"Tamrak may or may not be a fantasy world," the manual's backstory begins. Ooh, I like a good mystery. I mean, character creation has me choose between human, elf, and dwarf characters before sending me out into a landscape in which I fight orcs and goblins with elven daggers and magic spells. Also, the name of the game is The Fantasy Worlds of Tamrak. But, you know—the jury's still out.

      

It's a good metaphor for meta-data about the game itself. Most web sites, as well as the game's manual, give its name as Infinite Fantasy Adventures: Volume 1: The Fantasy World of Tamrak, but the title screen drops the series title. Perhaps nothing is more ambiguous than the name of the development kit (which we previously saw in The Rescue of Lorri in Lorrintron from 1991), which variously goes as DC-Games, DC-Play (sometimes without the hyphens), the Graphics Adventure Game System (or Builder), and the Generic Adventure Game System. Sometimes it goes by multiple names on the same screen.

         

That could be a sci-fi or steampunk castle.

      

That said, it's a competent enough kit (credited to David Hernandez of Plano, Texas), and I noted some of its strengths in the earlier entry. It offers keyword-based dialogues, a variety of text encounters, NPC movement scripting, complex item manipulation, and tactical combat reminiscent of Ultima V (the Ultima series is, of course, the source for the general look and feel of the kit). Neither game that we've seen has really exemplified what is possible with the kit. Tamrak is better than Lorrintron, but at least the author of the latter purchased the full version and could thus offer EGA graphics instead of this game's ugly CGA.

     

The story is that the world of Tamrak has long been going through a golden age under the wise reign of King Josephus. Tamrak consists of twelve "worlds," each ruled by an appointed lord, each represented by a jewel stored in a guarded safe in Josephus's castle. In response to some recent unrest, Josephus has the safe checked, and it turns out that someone has stolen the entire set of jewels. A tablet left behind indicates that the theft was orchestrated by the evil wizard Marbodaei, thought long-dead, now returned to launch his own claim to the throne. In desperation, Josephus flings a message calling for a hero into a time portal, where it arrives in the lab of the inventor of a time machine (the PC).  

      

Character creation has the player choose from elf, dwarf, wizard, archer, and fighter classes. The selection adjusts the game's attributes: strength, speed, aim, dexterity, hit points, IQ, and power. The player then gets to add to these attributes from a pool of bonus points.

     

I like that you get little tips on the uses of each attribute.

      

Gameplay starts in the character's own house, where he can pick up a key and a leather jacket. The backstory has already alerted the player that the time portal is hidden in a regular wall space, which serves as a hint to search the walls until he finds a secret door. But walking through the door just returns the character to the house; to move forward, he has to stand inside the doorway and hit E)nter.

      

Escaping the house.

       

Correct use of the portal sees the player arrive in the World of Tamrak, where his first priority is to find a town selling weapons. The game uses a traditional Ultima-style keyboard interface, with single letter commands like A)ttack, G)et an object, and T)alk. 

        

Arriving in Tamrak. Note the list of commands.

           

Tamrak's map is a large 100 x 255 tiles. The "worlds" of Tamrak—they may or may not be fantasy, remember—are just castles. The manual gives the names of all twelve—Odem, Pitdah, Bareketh, Nophak, Sappir, Yahalom, Leshem, Shebo, Ahlamah, Tarshish, Shoham, and Yashpheh—and their associated stones. (The source of this list is Exodus 28:17-20; each of these names is a gemstone displayed on a priestly breastplate that Moses ordered the Israelites to make.) These castles, as well as other scattered towns, also provide services including healers, pubs, and shops selling weapons, armor, spells, potions, necklaces, rings, and various modes of transportation.

      

Arriving in a new town.

      

Both indoors and outdoors, the character may be attacked by randomly-spawning enemies like orcs, trolls, giants, lizard men, snakes, water sprites, and pirate ships. Combat works like Ultima V in that a single enemy icon may turn out to include multiple enemies, which spread out and take on individual form once combat is engaged. Each round, the player can attack, cast a spell, or use an item. Attacks are targeted with a cursor that allows diagonal and ranged attacks. The character gets experience for every successful action, not just kills, and leveling up (which confers extra maximum hit points and spell power) is relatively swift.

        

Fighting a couple of lizard men.

       

There are some solid basic RPG mechanics here. I never fail to enjoy the process of slowly getting stronger, through both leveling and equipment purchases. Early-game combat is challenging and (for me) required careful use of spells like "Scare" and "Paralyze." It doesn't take long, however, for the game's many faults to come through.

    

• The game has a food mechanic, but food depletes so slowly (like one unit per 1,000 moves) that the developer might as well have not bothered. I think the starting 25 rations would last the entire game. This is good because:

• All food looted after battle is mysteriously rotten. 

• Something is broken with the random number generator that determines how much gold you find after battle. It's normally around 10-100, but every once in a while, you find thousands of gold pieces after killing the weakest enemy. You also sometimes find negative gold pieces, but this happens rarely enough that you can amass a fortune in a short time and buy the best items in the game. At some point, enemies stopped being able to do any damage to me at all when I crossed a certain AC threshold. 

       

That's what I call a Pyrrhic victory.

    

• When you enter certain buildings, you'd better pay attention to what square you arrived on because the game often shows no door, ladder, or other indication of the exit square. You have to just stand in the right place and hit E)xit.

      

Trying to find the way out of this shop.

      

• Sometimes, when you exit a city, you end up back at your house in the northwest part of the game map. 

• The game wastes the kit's dialogue abilities by rarely offering any keywords that NPCs respond to. Although like Ultima IV, everyone responds to NAME, there's no equivalent to JOB to prompt further discussion. The manual suggests that QUEST works, but no one I used it on responded.

      

Either Marta has a very strange nickname, or something has gone wrong with the data file here.

       

• You can ask a lot of NPCs to JOIN you, creating a party of up to six ("and another sixteen in reserve," the manual says, but I don't understand how that works). But a party simply multiplies the number of enemies you face in combat, making combat last a lot longer. Companions do not provide any advantage.

        

I briefly had a couple of allies.

      

• If you die, the game sometimes resurrects you and sometimes doesn't. (I think maybe you get a fixed number per level.) If it doesn't, you have to reload your last save game. But if you do, you mysteriously die again after one step. The only way to fix this is to completely quit the game and restart.

• Fully exploring the map means being able to cross water. The game offers a raft for sale, but for some reason it thinks the raft is food. You can Q)uaff it, for instance. If you drop it and use it to cross a river and then pick it up again, you'll lose it—the game adds it to your food total. Fortunately, there's a separate skiff that you can steal that doesn't have this problem. 

• Every 255 moves, the game says you're exhausted and forces you to C)amp and rest, an action that can be done literally anywhere and takes no time at all. 

      

I can even rest on a skiff in the middle of the ocean.

       

• The game will get into a glitch by which every store sells the exact same random things regardless of the specific nature of the store. 

• There are spelling errors on just about every screen. 

          

The "b" isn't even silent in that word.

        

The indoor areas can be unexpectedly large and complex. There are towers inside cities and dungeons inside towers. You have to watch for cave openings everywhere. My general sense is that finding each of the 12 gems requires solving a variety of puzzles or following a variety of hints. I found two of them in dungeons in their respective "worlds." As for the others, at least one site says that there's one puzzle in which you have to fool a guard with a false key, but I don't see how the mechanics even allow a puzzle of that kind of complexity.

      

This dungeon's name is a bit on-the-nose.

     

I wasn't really sure what to do with the two gems that I found (carnelian and emerald). I tried taking them to their respective kings, as a wizard told me, "Return the carnelian to the same place as Odem is." I tried speaking to the king of Odem, dropping the gem in front of him, dropping it on a nearby dais, and so forth, to no avail. I also tried returning them to King Josephus in his castle, Concord, but he also failed to recognize that I had them. He said that I should "return them to the Icon"; I have no idea what he means by that.

     

You mean "again," right?

     

A few other notes:

   

• The manual offers a list of different NPC types that the player will encounter, including trainers, beggars, and quest-givers, none of whom I encountered.

• I did encounter bartenders, however. You can order three beers at each of the game's pubs before the bartender cuts you off. You can ask for a tip after each beer, but the bartender only offers anything valuable after the second one.  

        

After three beers?! Oh, wait . . . I'm playing an elf.

       

• In addition to potions, the game has a lot of exotic foods that provide various temporary benefits like enhanced strength or rapid hit point regeneration.

       

I hope that the bread and cakes are "in the culinary style of the elves."

     

• I found two "proclamations," but the game offers no way that I can find to read them. 

• There's a store where you can buy lanterns and torches, but none of the underground areas were dark. The same store offers keys, but so far every locked door and chest could be bashed open.

          

But why?

            

If the game isn't unwinnable because of its bugs, it is unwinnable because of its shareware nature. The demo version allows the player to enter four of the twelve castles; the others simply say that there is no door present.

     

That must be inconvenient.

     

You had to register the full game to get access to the rest of it. The author asked $10 plus $2 for shipping and handling. The registration form promises that in addition to the full version of the game, those who register it will receive "a jewel from the Fantasy World of Tamrak," guaranteed to be "natural in origin." There's a skeptical part of me that wonders whether the full version ever really existed, and whether anyone really got that gem.

 

An NPC offers commentary on the shareware nature of the game. Technically, I have 10 jewels to find.

       

The Fantasy Worlds of Tamrak was written by Ray Johnson of Tupelo, Mississippi. (He gives a "C.G." after his name, and I cannot come up with any idea for what it stands for.) Johnson apparently also created a text adventure called Lost Gold: The Search for the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine in 1992 (also made using a kit; in this case, the BIG Adventure Game Toolkit). I like to think its story began, "The Dutchman Gold Mine may or may not be lost."