Realms of the Haunting is a 1996 first-person shooter/adventure video game developed by Gremlin Interactive and published by Interplay Productions for MS-DOS personal computers. Its gameplay is a hybrid of point-and-click puzzle-solving/exploration and first-person action, interspersed with full-motion video sequences featuring live-action actors. The player takes the role of Adam Randall (David Tuomi) investigating a haunted mansion in remote Cornwall after his father's death, only to be tasked to prevent an impending apocalypse with help from a psychic Rebecca Trevisard.

The game is powered by programmer Antony Crother's True3D game engine, which was also used in Gremlin's earlier adventure game Normality. It was first released in United Kingdom on four compact discs at December 1996, then a patched version in United States on March 24, 1997 with additional combat difficulty options and the ability to remap keyboard controls.

Gameplay Realms of the Haunting is a point-and-click adventure game, played from a first-person perspective. Players can click on specific objects to interact with, examined with a descriptive remark from the character, or collect them into their inventory. Unlike most adventure games at the time that used pre-rendered static backgrounds only navigable by clicking on hotspots, players can freely roam and view real-time 3D environments from all angles. Enemies must be fought using a variety of weapons, including a sword, pistol, shotgun, and a magical scepter. The story of Realms of the Haunting is mainly told through full-motion video cutscenes utilizing live-action actors, as well as reading letters, journals and scrolls scattered throughout the world.

Plot A young expatriate Englishman Adam Randall (David Tuomi) returns to Cornwall for the funeral of his estranged father, pastor of the small village Helston. Upon arrival, he had nightmares of a haunted house and a vision of a mysterious woman he never met before. Eventually, a suspicious-looking priest Elias Camber visits Adam, claiming to be his father's friend. Elias reveals that his father had become increasingly agitated in a series of exchanged letnters after discovering a mysterious dark house with terrible secrets, and hands him a box of broken seals received from him before his death. Its mysterious powers, on top of darker nightmares, led to Adam finally investigate the house himself. As he enters, however, the doors lock behind him and he is forced to journey through the entire house while looking for answers as well as a means of escaping it. Along the way he meets up with a psychic woman, Rebecca Trevisard (Emma Powell), who provides guidance to Adam as they work together to escape. Adam soon discovers the house contains portals to several different universes, and that he is the Chosen One who must prevent the final apocalyptic battle between the forces of good and evil.

The game has over 40 hours of content, including many different universes to visit and a plot which involves multiple sides fighting for their own causes. The beginning gives the idea of Adam being against demonic forces, but later the player finds him caught in a much deeper plot between different forces, where demons play only one role.

Development and release Realms of the Haunting was Gremlin's most expensive project ever, and took three years to make. The idea for a 3D shooter/adventure hybrid game was conceived by programmer Antony Crowther, who had recently developed a new Doom-like 3D game engine called "True3D". He proposed to his previous employer Gremlin two ideas to base his new engine on: a horror or fantasy game, to which Gremlin chose the former. Game designer and writer Paul Green was responsible for creating its plot, characters and setting. The fictional mythology was based on various real-life legends, folklore, religious and historical texts, including Hebrew texts on Heaven and Hell, the Knights Templar, the Seven Seals as well as the 1982 speculative fiction The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail. Horror movies including Michael Mann's The Keep and John Carpenter's The Thing inspired the game's horror atmosphere. The 3D environments were built with an in-house map editor made by Crowther and then textured using 3D Studio, Deluxe Paint and Photoshop.

The full-motion video sequences were directed and edited by Alan Coltman with visual effects including prosthetics, makeup, props and costumes by Bright Light Studios in Warwickshire. Actors were filmed in front of a blue-screen, who are then composited into backgrounds rendered from the same in-game environments on Silicon Graphics workstations. 25 hours of live-action footage were filmed over six weeks within a single cramped room, before being edited down to two hours of cutscenes included in the game.

A DOSBox emulated version was released for digital download on Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X at GOG.com at 2011 and Steam at 2014 by Funbox Media. Funbox also released a limited edition physical boxed edition on May 1, 2026.

Reception

Realms of the Haunting was met with critical acclaim. It received an average score of 92% at GameRankings, based on an aggregate of 7 reviews. Though he noted a lack of originality in the basic plot, Air Hendrix of GamePro found the high-quality cinematics, atmospheric presentation, and overall strong gameplay as both a puzzle adventure and a first-person shooter made Realms of the Haunting a captivating experience. He summarized, "While sometimes it gets frustratingly arbitrary, overall the adventure side, action side, and story line blend together quite nicely." Both Air Hendrix and a Next Generation critic remarked that the controls are clunky at first, but can be adjusted to with time. Next Generation was most impressed with the game's massive size, reckoning that it takes 80 to 100 hours to complete, rarely reuses textures or architectural designs in different areas, and has a huge variety of monsters. The reviewer concluded, "For something that came from Interplay with very little fanfare, Realms of the Haunting could be one of the best adventure games of this year."

During the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' inaugural Interactive Achievement Awards, Realms of the Haunting was a finalist for "PC Adventure Game of the Year" and "Computer Entertainment Title of the Year", which ultimately went to Blade Runner and StarCraft, respectively.

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