REVIEWS COURTESY OF ZXSR

Dracula
by Ian Ellery, Rod Pike
CRL Group PLC
1986
Crash Issue 37, Feb 1987   page(s) 54

Producer: CRL
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Rod Pike

'Here at last! The coach halts outside the Golden Krone Hotel. It has been a scenic journey if nothing else! Halfway across Europe through some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. But it is a wild untamed landscape that seems only grudgingly to tolerate the coach tracks winding through it like arteries, hurrying weary fares to their destinations, maybe even their destinies... Strange that I think that, but, as I leave the coach, the sinister fear of something unknown steals over me... Bah! I am acting like a child! I must pull myself together. Here in the Carpathian Mountains, I am a day's journey from my client's abode. But first some rest. East lies the hotel'.

There's a very good reason for showing you the first passage; this game uses one of the most difficult character sets I have ever tried to read, complete with very unattractive small i's for l's. But wait a minute, I'm a fair way into this review and I haven't mentioned its chief selling point which concerns its 15 certificate - apparently the first computer game to receive such an accolade from the British Board of Censors. There's only one thing wrong here and that's the conspicuous lack of blood and gore in the pictures that would warrant such a certificate.

You begin outside the hotel and a little disagreement has cropped up between yourself and the coachman who has brought you this far. Although he is a rough-looking fellow and is no doubt a villain and a drunkard, he may well have a point in blocking your way and it shouldn't take too much to work out what his grievance is. The next location is the hotel itself and quoting this one will give you some indication of one of the main strengths of the game - its descriptions which read as well as a book:

'I am in the foyer of the hotel. It is a most intriguing place, adorned with the trim and trappings of mountain life. Deer skins hang on the walls in a rather random fashion, mixed with the crafted leather harness and sleigh bells, adding a degree of rustic charm to the scene. An ornate carved pine staircase leads up to the bedrooms above. Through a most picturesque archway to the east lies a dining room, while south leads to the Reception desk. Westward, through a heavily timbered door, lies the road. Flickering oil lamps cast shimmering pools of yellow light around the room, creating dark mysterious corners, corners where evil could hide and quietly fester, unseen until..?'.

It doesn't require too much to find and ring the bell at Reception whereupon a poorly dressed but clean innkeeper, who speaks only pidgin English, appears on the scene and, like everything else you encounter before retiring to bed, he gradually raises more fear, disturbing you in a very fundamental way. In the first game I played I awoke from some pretty wild nightmares to be stabbed by the innkeeper, but on subsequent attempts the innkeeper was kind enough to direct me to the stagecoach outside. The ride in the coach ended up in a mountain ravine, however, so how about skipping over to Part Two or Part Three?

The Arrival, Part Two, tells of an eventful coach journey which ultimately brings our man to the castle. After a night or two and some long discussions with the Count, he realises that not only is he a prisoner, but his life is in danger. Escape becomes his one obsession. Should he succeed, he vows to write to his friend in England to warn of his discoveries. The castle holds terrors beyond his worst nightmares.

The Hunt, Part Three, sees Doctor Seward, a psychiatrist at an institution for the insane in England, receive a very odd letter from a friend on business abroad. Something about boxes of earth and the 'undead'. Although he fleetingly wonders about his friend's sanity, he resolves to investigate further. He also has problems of his own. An inmate Renfield, has gone missing and though not considered dangerous, the malignant influence of Dracula is suspected in turning the man's subdued character.

The BBC banning a pop record, quite rightly, resulted in it topping the hit parade. The young have for some time now been fascinated by blood, gore and things that up and go walkabouts in the dead of night. Any marketing man worth his desk top toys knows these facts, but this shouldn't unduly colour your view of this game. The character set takes some deciphering but once understood the game turns out to be well written and a good read.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: easy first part
Presentation: confusing character set
Input facility: verb/noun
Response: looks Quilled


REVIEW BY: Derek Brewster

Atmosphere96%
Vocabulary85%
Logic89%
Addictive Quality88%
Overall89%
Summary: General Rating: Spooky

Transcript by Chris Bourne

Your Sinclair Issue 14, Feb 1987   page(s) 72

FAX BOX
Title: Dracula
Publisher: CRL
Price: £7.95

Hooray, I thought, appropriately ripping open the package with my teeth, here's the finished version of Dracula at last, and not too long after the scheduled release date of Halloween. But what's this? Pre-release cassettes inside... and covering only two of the three parts in this adventure. Oh well, let's take a look at what we've got.

The first part deals with your final stopping-off point, The Golden Krone Hotel, before you make your way to Castle Dracula. You step down from your coach and try to enter the hotel, only to have the coachman stop you and demand his fare. Reasonable enough, though typing I for inventory informs you that you have nothing with you at all, so this could prove a tricky encounter. Despite the lack of funds, you can simply PAY COACHMAN and make your way into the hotel, where you proceed to do lots of exciting things like registering. A quick trip upstairs to your room, have a LOOK AROUND and then it's down to the dining room for a meal before turning in for the night. Your success in part one is dictated entirely by what you eat and drink at this point, choosing from three options for each, so it's just a case of trial and error, which seems rather unadventurous to me.

Upstairs you fall asleep. and various things happen according to what you've eaten and drunk. Eventually you'll hit on the right combination and find yourself able to go outside the hotel and type WAIT several times till a coach turns up to take you to Castle Dracula (and without paying your bill, too, so presumably you used up all your non-existent money on the coachman first time around). The only thing that's needed to complete the six locations of part one is to give the coachman your name. It's here you realise that you're not told this anywhere, so unless you've got a copy of the original Bram Stoker book to hand you'll have to play through part one again till you reach the point where it's possible to find out your own name.

Part Two is called 'Arrival', and according to the cassette cover this provides an eventful coach journey before your imprisonment by Count Dracula himself. My coach journey was totally uneventful. Typing LOOK AROUND revealed that a woman was sitting opposite me - just as well I looked, otherwise I'd never have noticed her. Not that this did me much good, as after about ten minutes of inputs all I'd managed to do was extract a smile from the woman. All the while this was going on the coach plodded quite unconvincingly nearer its destination, and never quite got there. Boredom set in.

Part Three apparently switches the story to a friend of the hero's in England, a Doctor Seward, whose investigations should help release Dracula's prisoner. I'll review that part when it arrives.

Final verdict? Impressive use of lengthy sections of text, but ultimately an adventure that promises much more than it actually delivers.


REVIEW BY: Mike Gerrard

Graphics4/10
Text8/10
Value For Money6/10
Personal Rating5/10
Overall6/10
Transcript by Chris Bourne

Sinclair User Issue 58, Jan 1987   page(s) 27

Label: CRL
Author: Rod Pike
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: John Gilbert

CRL's Dracula is a masses-of-hard-to-read text adventure with some graphics, which owes its reputation largely to the 15 Certificate plonked on it by the British Board of Film censors.

Being the only horror officianado on SU I was intrigued to know what the censors found so appalling. I was, however, soon to learn that the 15 suits the content of a game which at times puts up ghoulishly digitised pictures of death and atmospheric descriptive passage - some of which could have been pulled straight from a Shaun - see last month's fantasy page - Hutson book.

The game is in three parts, all of which can be played independently, and it reads very like a book. There's three complete game Loads here so it's big. The first part, called The First Night, takes place at the Transylvanian inn where Jonathan Harker spent his last night before his trip to Count Dracula's castle. It's designed as a gentle introduction to new adventurers and as a scene setter for more advanced players. All you need to do is pay the coachman, sign the inn's register, pick up your keys and have dinner to regain your strength. After that it's up to your room for some sleep. Do go up to bed. There's a nifty dream sequence with gore plenty for horror fans. Make sure that you close the window or the nightmarish visitation which you see as a dream image will chase you into reality and kill you.

If you die in Part 1 you're treated to one of the digitised death pictures, in this case a cowled skull, neatly illustrated in red and blue.

The Arrival, the second part, is a different story altogether. You'll find it fiendishly difficult to escape from the coach which takes you most of the way to Castle Dracula. A very strange and shady lady occupies the carriage with you and, if you stare at her long enough she'll give you some indication of the future - particularly of three ladies who are very long in the teeth. If you're lucky you'll escape from the Castle with only your sanity out of gear, get back home to England and be able to prepare for Part 3: The Hunt.

I managed to solve The First Night in 20 minutes, which did not bode well for the rest of the game. The language parser takes only the first few words of each command into account, so you can't string several commands together as it'll only obey the first one. In some cases, however, the language is necessarily dense. For instance, when you type Look you'll get the reply 'I see nothing of consequence'. You've got to specify the object of your desires and in some cases - particularly in Parts 2 and 3.

So far you've mainly taken the role of Johnathan Harker, who's devil's own task is to deliver the deeds of Carrfax Hall into the hands of the Count. He moves into the Hall, near Whitby in Yorkshire, and you take on the guise of John Seward, physician and diary keeper. He's a resident of the village in which Dracula stalks at night.

Some places are off limits in this part of the game, until you progress beyond a certain point. For instance, when you leave your house the directions to Carfax Hall are given but, when you try to go there, the program says 'I don't want to do that at this time'.

You'll also have to revisit some locations more than once to pick up objects which you didn't know were there unless you took advantage of the unhelpful Look command to see in all the nooks and crannies. For instance, you can visit the village store but can't buy an all important newspaper - unless you've picked up the money at an earlier point.

Despite those admittedly nit-picking criticisms and reservations Dracula is great fun. Some sequences may disturb Mary Whitehouse but I can't see anyone else being affected. There's nothing in the game which is utterly grotesque and there are no stomach-lurching scenes.


REVIEW BY: John Gilbert

Overall5/5
Summary: The gothic character set and digitised pictures just make you want to die. Great ghoulish fun in three full Loads.

Transcript by Chris Bourne

C&VG (Computer & Video Games) Issue 61, Nov 1986   page(s) 79

SUPPLIER: CRL
MACHINE: Spectrum 48K, Commodore 64, Amstrad
PRICE: £7.95

"The coachman, a rough looking fellow stands before me. He has spent most of the journey complaining about his hard life, bemoaning his humble upbringing on the one hand, then cursing those who had better fortune. I detect that he could be a villain, and probably a drunkard...."

So starts Dracula, and the above text, verbatim from the game, serves well to illustrate the storyline, and atmospheric nature of the game. Arriving at your hotel, you must behave naturally, and do what is normal at a hotel. In order to spend a restful night in preparation for your onward journey. The next day, however, it pays to watch what you eat. You wouldn't want to suffer from nightmares, would you...?

The game is based on the original Dracula novel by Bram Stoker - written some hundred or so years ago. If you have read it, your excitement in playing the game may well be heightened, although it will only be of minor help in completing it.

Despite the volume of text, (quite often more than a screenful of narrative follows a command) all is not visible on entry to a room. Examining things often reveals what is not noticed at a first glance. I've always believed that EXAMINE is a crucial command in an adventure. Without it, everything must be taken at face value, and the player is left to the mercy of an author's not always logical thinking. In Dracula, the command is handled well.

Author Rod Pike believes that adventure problems should be situation driven, and not rely on traversing hundreds of locations to get object A to location B. Certainly Dracula is none too heavy on locations; there are a mere six in the first part, for example. But getting through to the end of it is no five minute job, and it culminates in a problem somewhat reminiscent of the shooting gallery problem in Mystery Fun House. The answer is so obvious, that it is all but staring you in the face. But will you think of it?!

Although an impressive text adventure, graphics are also featured in the game. Unfortunately, these were not far enough advanced for me to see, and CRL were being aggravatingly secretive about what they had up their sleeves. CRL's own artist cum programmer, Jon Law, is working on them, rather than leaving them to the mercy of The Illustrator. Something unconventional is promised, but nobody was saying anything, except that they believe what they have in store has never before been done in an adventure. To add a further dimension of creepiness to the pictures there will be accompanying sound.

Already in its silent text form, Dracula is shaping up to be a first class adventure of its type, and will be released in three parts on two cassettes, on Halloween.


REVIEW BY: Keith Campbell

Vocabulary7/10
Atmosphere9/10
Personal8/10
Value8/10
Transcript by Chris Bourne

Your Computer Issue 10, Oct 1986   page(s) 40

CBM64/Spectrum 48K/Amstrad CPC
CRL Group
Text Adventure
£7.95 Cass, £12.95 Disc

Ever since Bram Stoker wrote her immortal tale about Dracula, countless people have sat glued either to a cinema screen or at home in front of a television set and watched the gory tale unfold. Scott Adams was one of the first programmers to use the idea for a computer adventure. Named The Count, it was the first step into gothic horror. Since then the infamous Count has appeared in many disguises in many adventures.

It was only a matter of time before a game based on Stoker's novel would be produced. The problem, I think, was getting the proper person to convey to a micro adventure Stoker's ghastly story. It needed a word-painter of the highest calibre and who better than the author of the superb Pilgrim, Rod Pike.

From the opening paragraphs you know this adventure is special. There are not many authors in the adventure world who can write the way this man does. The scene is set immediately when, on loading, you are presented by a chilling picture of the evil Count's shadow slowly climbing the stairs. Written in the first person, you play the part of Jonathan Harker.

After receiving a request from Count Dracula regarding the purchase of some property you travel to the Count's home in far-off Carpathia. Pike begins to set the mood from the outset with his skilful manipulation of the English language and the crafty way he creates the problems for you to overcome, but they are purely logical and that adds immensely to the playability of the game.

There are no graphics apart from the loading screen but no amount of graphics could impart the sinister atmosphere which Pike's words conjure for you. One example of the type of description you can look forward to is after reaching the hotel and eating a meal you decide to retire for the night and it is while you are asleep that a nightmare unfolds before you. To put some of it into Pike's words: "It towers above me. I smell its putrid breath - so close. Burning red eyes sear into the very inner being of my mind. A scream destroys my mental focus my brain cannot cope". That continues for sometimes up to two screensmarvellous stuff.

The clever and sometimes frustrating way Pike creates problems is shown in the nightmare scene. If you do not do certain actions there are three possible conclusions, so it is very important to take notice of everything you read on-screen.

With the imminent release of Dracula, CRL and Pike have proved once again that graphics add nothing to a well-constructed text-only adventure and I feel certain that Pike is destined to become a cult figure in the adventure world. As a final word all I can say is "More please - soon".


GraphicsNone
Atmosphere4/5
Playability4/5
Value For Money5/5
Overall5/5
Transcript by Chris Bourne

ZX Computing Issue 34, Feb 1987   page(s) 58

CRL
£8.95

Horror has never been treated properly in adventure games. Instead of attempting to build up atmosphere, or shock, most authors abuse the genre by making camp jokes or mixing up various legends (for example having vampires and werewolves in the same game); either that, or the game is really cliched.

How refreshing and welcome Dracula is. By taking the story seriously, and sticking closely to the original Bram Stoker novel, instead of the silly Hollywood version, this game comes closer than any I have played to being quite spine-chilling. It isn't frightening - I don't see how a series of characters on screen could be - but the horror elements can be appreciated.

There are three separate games, which can be played independently though the narrative flows through them. In 'The First Night', you are Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor visiting a client in Transylvania who has purchased a house in England, and wishes to bring with him some local soil. The game concerns your troubled night at The Golden Krone Hotel, the last stop over of your journey. 'Arrival' finds you realising that you are a prisoner at Castle Dracula, and in danger! Your task is escape. In 'The Hunt' you play a different character, Doctor Seward, a psychiatrist who receives a peculiar letter about the 'undead' from his friend John Harker. But he has problems of his own: an inmate from his asylum is behaving murderously. Little does Seward know that the normally subdued Renfield is under the influence of... Dracula!

The game has reams of description, some of the longest I have seen. Evocatively written, it creates a suitable atmosphere. You anticipate in fear until, suddenly, the shock moments of terror (well, supposedly) occur. On the first night you have an apparition. "... he has no face!! just raw, burned flesh!!... the apparition drips fetid blood onto my face - evil exudes from every pore of its vile being."

Then we have the graphics. Although the game is Quilled, CRL have wisely avoided having split screen location graphics, clumsily and slowly drawn with the Illustrator; their crudeness would make a mockery of the game's atmosphere. Instead, when a frightening event occurs, a keypress causes the screen to go black and, in the middle, a small graphic appears to illustrate the event. But what graphics! Very high resolution and quality (they look digitised), they are suitably gruesome in subject matter and genuinely effective.

The game has flaws. First is the character set which, though perhaps suitable in style. Is difficult to read and entirely upper case; some of the mounting dread is lost because you are straining to read the text. The choice of colours - yellow on blue - is not very suitable. There's no ram save/load in a game where death occurs more frequently than others, and the vocabulary is occasionally too limited. Worst of all, in a game with this much text, are the instances of poor punctuation, spelling and proof-reading. "Transilvania" for goodness sake! And surely someone at CRL must know the difference between "it's" and "Its".

Despite these niggles, I enjoyed Dracula a great deal. It really does feel like participating in a novel; furthermore, it must be the closest conversion from another medium the Spectrum has ever seen. Considering the subject matter, this should be a Monster Hit, but isn't quite stunning enough. Great value and strongly recommended nonetheless.


OverallGreat
Award: ZX Computing Globella

Transcript by Chris Bourne

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