Draculaland

Robin Johnson has a lot of quirky ideas, and within the severe limitations of the format of his game (see below) the writing is amusing, refreshing and down to the point. That should easily make forget that the setting of the game is pretty cliché.

Unfortunately the technical novelty of reducing a parser game to the most indispensable verbs and available objects leads to two problems: The solution to many puzzles is obvious when the necessary verb-object combination is suddenly highlighted (e.g. a beer usually has the options "drop" and "drink" with it, and when the right situation comes up an additional "give" option pops up), and not coming up with the correct solution immediately entices you to fall a dull simply-click-everything routine that many magazine editors criticize about P&C adventures. It doesn't exactly help that the entire text is kept in a Scott Adams telegraphic style which cuts off the feeling of exploring a game world's details.

As an interface experiment Draculaland is really cool. And it has its moments, see above. But in general, as a game I want to dive into it fails.