VMC10_073I.zip Contains VMC10.exe Type CLOAD & hit ENTER. Select CASTLDRA.C10 in the JimG subdirectory of the Cassette directory. Type RUN... Windows Application (Windows XP and later) (Compressed with ZIP. Free Unzip tools are available for most systems at www.info-zip.org.)
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Your computer has placed you in an imaginary world set in a little village in Transylvania. You play the part of Baron von Helsing, who is on a touring holiday with his wife. After staying one night in a small inn, you wake to find your wife missing and no-one has seen her. You get the impression that the mysterious castle on the hill is involved, but none of the locals will even talk about it! This then, is the setting for the start of your adventure.
Versions exist for Commodore 16, TRS-80 MC-10, Dragon 32/64
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Average Rating: based on 2 ratings Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 1 Write a review
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4 people found the following review helpful:
A zombie and a hunchback walk into a plank. Neither is harmed., July 9, 2023
I played a Commodore 64 version of Castle Dracula. The original BASIC game was published in CLOAD magazine, later distributed commercially by Microdeal and much later received further porting attention to other systems.
This adventure shares the most typical set-up for 8-bit Dracula adventure games: It plonks you roughly outside the castle and tasks you with going in and killing Dracula. I don't know the source of the flavour-adding blurb text concerning your missing wife but it goes unreferenced by the game.
For what was originally a magazine game, Castle Dracula has a big map. It is otherwise perhaps the epitome of elbow-grease-requiring two-word parser adventuring. The defining annoyance for the modern player is that almost nothing has a description if you EXAMINE it. If nothing's worth examining, then all you have is the ability to collect objects, or to try to VERB them on rooms and objects. There are no additional nudges towards solutions beyond the initial prose presentations of anything.
Again, this kind of solving-it-in-your-head approach is the bread and butter of a lot of games of this type. I found it too tedious in this one. For instance, there's a plank. There are so many great things you could think of doing with the plank (smack a zombie or hunchback or annoying suit of armour with it, build a ladder, cross a pit) and none will work or give much feedback except the correct ones performed with the correct verbs in the correct locations. And there are a ton of locations, so even just testing one idea across the board is too much slog.
There's also an inventory limit (leads to huge back-and-forthing on the map), some finite supplies (fortunately not the light source!), a slightly mazey forest, and one command that's crucial for more than one puzzle and which I'm not sure I'd have come up with myself. If you want a single bit of advice for Castle Dracula in general that will really improve your experience, here it is: (Spoiler - click to show)GIVE doesn't work, but OFFER does.
I'm a (blood)sucker for all things Dracula. This one has a good Dracula setting with forest and church and castle, but is otherwise more a haunted house adventure with a cute attitude; as well as the zombie, you'll meet a Quasi Quasimodo. And when I say meet, I mean he'll be present in a room a the same time as you. Communication is beyond the scope of this game. You can refer to him as QUA because only three letters are read by the parser.