Tranquility (partially found Windows and MacOS abstract game, 2001-2010)

The game's logo (Website).

Status: Partially Found

Tranquility (TQWorld version) was a 3D first-person abstract platformer-like game that was released in 2001 for MacOS and Windows, developed by William A. Romanowski and published by TQworld LLC. The game was distributed only through its website, tqworld.com. It received a feature by Apple on their website in April 2001.

Each time a game was played, the levels and music were generated on TQWorld servers. The game used its own ".tq" file format and language for levels. Soundtrack changes based on player movement, and actions. There were multiple types of access for playing the game, Demo access allowed to play training levels, and daily demo. Free membership allowed to set preferences, create levels on TQbuilder website and play TQradio generated music. Full membership was available for $6 lifetime online purchase and allowed to play all TQclassic campaign levels and generate, download infinite levels.

Detailed information about Tranquility and its history were published by William A. Romanowski in a 2007 pitch for social funding.

Gameplay

The protagonist with first-person camera is floating in space-like void filled with a lot of flat geometric shapes, and being affected by gravity, slowly falling down, and bounces of the shapes and the floor to go upwards. Movement is controlled with mouse, left-clicking or pressing spacebar makes the player fall down with a higher rebound from the shapes. The goal of each level is to find a "spinner", sun-shaped platform that teleports the player to another level.

Availability

The game servers were active from 2001, and went offline in 2009-2010, making the website show an error, and all online features of the game stopped working, making level generation impossible. The game itself was archived in Wayback Machine for Windows and MacOS on the downloads page. While the game starts up and loads the menu, only demo levels are available unless you install levels that have been archived from before the server switch off (see below). Whilst the game crashes on most modern PCs, it works on low-end PCs and virtual machines. The Windows version works just fine in Wine/CrossOver on macOS.

Archived Levels

A repository of archived levels has been setup. These are levels that were stored in your local tranquility folder prior to the servers being switched off. It should be possible to decipher or reverse-engineer the definition language for the game which is described in the file that makes up the main menu to the game.

Web remake

In April 2021 a web-based remake of Tranquility was announced and made available by one of the original programmers. It's unclear whether this is a port of the original code or a remake using modern technology. What is clear is that the web-version controls and plays quite differently to the original.

Gallery

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  Tranquility gameplay screenshot.

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Gameplay video.