Dracula series

The term Dracula series refers to a multi-part adventure computer game series, consisting of the individual titles Dracula: Resurrection , Dracula 2: The Last Sanctuary , Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon , Dracula 4: The Shadow of the Dragon and Dracula 5: The Blood Legacy . The games originally developed by Wanadoo are based in terms of content and theme on passages from the popular novel Dracula by Bram Stoker . While the second part is a direct continuation of the first part, part 3 only loosely ties in with its two predecessors. The last published fourth and fifth part also tell their own story and represent two parts of a related game. Dracula Ressurection and Dracula 2: The last refuge appeared for the PlayStation 1. The remaining Dracula games then appeared only on the PC.

Dracula: Resurrection

Studio

Wanadoo / France Telekom , Sierra , Microïds

Publisher

Wanadoo

Erstveröffent-
lichung

1999 for Windows, 2001 for PlayStation, 2011 for iOS and macOS, 2013 for Android, 2014 for Steam

platform

Windows , PlayStation , Apple iOS , macOS , Steam

Game mode

system advantages
preconditions

Windows 95/98, Pentium 166, 4-way CD-ROM drive, 32 MB RAM

action

1897 near the small Carpathian village of Borgo in Transylvania . Most of the events known from the novel took place as described. Lawyer Jonathan Harker , together with his friend Quincey P. Morris and his fiancée Mina, found the vampire " Count Dracula " and can destroy him in an ambush after ambushing. The Harkers return to London , where Mina is still suffering from the effects of the vampire bite seven years later. She decides to return to Transylvania on her own to end her martyrdom. Jonathan follows her.

Arrived in Borgo, Harker tries to get into Dracula's castle. This poses problems for him because, on the one hand, the villagers fear the count and what is going on in the castle and, on the other hand, Dracula's henchman is monitoring the access routes. Harker arrives at a mysterious dragon ring and, following clues, comes across a secret passage that eventually leads him to the castle, where Mina is in the hands of Dracula.

In the castle, Harker encounters some magic barriers that make it difficult for him to get ahead - as well as in the dungeon on the exiled witch Dorko , a former companion of Dracula. She is prevented from leaving the cellar by a curse and offers Harker a pact: Jonathan should get Dorko a certain amulet, which symbolizes her curse. For this, the witch wants to lead Harker to Mina, who is being held by Dracula in a vault in the attic.

Harker has to solve many puzzles and break spells and finally comes into possession of the amulet, which is guarded by Dracula's henchmen. Dorko then leads Harker into the vault of Mina as promised, but locks him in to sacrifice both to Dracula. Using a Da Vinci aircraft, Harker can escape the castle and bring Mina to safety.

Dracula 2: The Last Refuge

Studio

Wanadoo / France Telekom , Index, Modern Games

Publisher

Wanadoo

Erstveröffent-
lichung

Windows (2000), PlayStation (2002), iOS and macOS (2012), Android (2013), Steam (2014)

platform

Windows , PlayStation , Apple iOS , macOS , Steam

Game mode

system advantages
preconditions

Windows 95/98, Pentium 166, 4-way CD-ROM drive, 16 MB RAM, 16-bit sound card, 16-bit video card with 1000 colors

action

London, 1904. The action begins a week after Dracula: Resurrection : Jonathan Harker has escaped from Dracula's castle with Mina. The girl is being treated for her vampire bite and the associated dropouts with Harker's friend Dr. John Seward who runs an insane asylum .

While Seward is curing Mina, Harker goes to Carfax , a country house in the British capital, which Dracula uses as his home in England and which is in the immediate vicinity of the institution. After Harker has managed to destroy this cinema and a cinema run by the Count, Dracula strikes back with the same coin. He also bites Seward and kidnaps Mina to Transylvania since he no longer has a hostel in London. Harker's only clues are the dragon ring and Hopkins , an insect- devouring inmate of the clinic who has a preference for Mina and leads Jonathan on the count's trail.

Harker comes back to Borgo and Dracula's castle, where he comes across the legend of Saint George - as well as the witch Dorko. This time she wants to help him, but is killed by Dracula's henchmen. As he dies, she gives him the decisive clue how Jonathan can defeat the vampire prince: if you connect the dragon ring to a certain gemstone , the vampire's power is broken. This stone was in the possession of General Radu , Dracula's brother.

Harker manages to procure this stone and forcing Dracula to coping of several traps and puzzles to retreat in the last refuge: a branched crypt beneath a the keep . With the help of the wedding ring he regains Mina and unites Radu's stone with the dragon ring. Dracula and his henchmen are destroyed and Mina is freed from the curse.

Dracula 3: The Dragon's Path

Studio

Kheops Studio (Windows) / Tetraedge Games (iOS, macOS)

Publisher

Microïds (PC, Europe) / Encore Games (PC, North America) / Chillingo (iOS) / Coladia (macOS)

Erstveröffent-
lichung

2008

platform

Windows / Apple iOS / macOS / Steam

Game mode

system advantages
preconditions

Windows 98 SE / 2000 / XP / Vista, Pentium III, 128 MB RAM, 4 GB free hard disk space, 16x DVD-Rom drive, 64 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card

action

Vatican, 1920. Father Arno Moriani of the Congregation for Holy Rites learns from Cardinal Felicio Briganti that he will be sent to the village of Vladoviste, part of the diocese of Alba Iula , to receive information about Martha Calugarul, a scientist and candidate for canonization , who died a few months ago procure. The procedure should be brought to a quick completion, as the recent annexation of Transylvania by Romania has made the Catholics a minority. A local saint would strengthen the trust of regional Catholics in the church and in themselves.

After Moriani's arrival in Vladoviste, Ozana, the owner of the inn where he lived during his stay, told him that Calugarul had saved her son, Ariel, in times of serious illness by paying for a cure on the coast. In the inn, Moriani also meets Janos Pekmester, a professor in medieval history who is in Vladoviste to examine the ruins of the nearby "Castle of Twilight". He also learns something about Calugarul's life story: After she became a scientist, she fell victim to an accident in the laboratory and wore a veil to hide one half of her face. Later she worked with Professor Heinrich von Krüger from Munich on a disease called "P Syndrome". During the war she stayed in Vladoviste and took care of the wounded on both sides. She died in her sleep, apparently from exhaustion, shortly after the war ended.

The next day, Moriani meets a reporter named Stephan Luca. He tells him that Calugarul was murdered because of her fight against evil. He shows Moriani a letter from Calugarul to him, in which she reports of increasing deaths due to inexplicable lack of blood . He also shows Moriani Calugarul's medical reports, in which she tells of patients who sleepwalk and react aggressively to garlic . According to Luca, all these patients had two small bruises on their necks at the time of death and the "P abnormality" was found in the blood. Ariel was one such patient but he recovered quickly after Calugarul sent him away from Vladoviste. She began to believe that a vampire was up to mischief in the village and went on the "path of the dragon" to find him. Moriani grudgingly concludes that Calugarul could never be canonized because of her belief in vampires and practicing the occult .

He then calls Cardinal Briganti. He tells him to close the Calugarul case and instead begin an investigation with the aim of counter-evidence of the existence of vampires. Briganti explains that since the publication of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" the Vatican has observed an enormous increase in belief in vampires and is determined to counteract it. To do this, Moriani must secure an appropriate explanation from a recognized scientist and historian. Luca, on the other hand, insists that Dracula is not a fictional character, but a real living being and the path of the dragon leads to his whereabouts.

Moriani calls Professor von Krüger, who explains that "P Syndrome" is a disorder in the blood that produces symptoms very similar to those associated with vampires and that he is currently working on a healing serum. The next day Moriani makes his way to Budapest to meet Professor Irina Boczow, the world's greatest expert on vampirism. Boczow tells Moriani about the history of vampirism and reveals to him that she herself believes in real vampires. She then hands him the book "The Lords of Twilight", which says you have to pass the path of the dragon to become a vampire. The book speculates that Vlad Țepeș himself contested the path in his youth. Boczow also tells Moriani that the book was written by the Thule Society , an evil organization with a lot of power.

Back in Vladoviste, Luca decides to take the dragon's path alone. In the evening Moriani writes his report on vampires. The next morning, Luca is found shot dead at close range in the next room and Moriani decides to walk the path of the dragon to face the evil that threatens the village. Based on letters from Calugarul to Luca, he went to a mountain region in Turkey , in which Vlad Tepes was previously held captive. There he finds out that the prisoners were left behind as food for a creature living in the forest, so that it spared the nearby villages. However, Vlad was not intended as an offering for this creature.

Moriani goes back to Budapest to meet Professor Boczow. When he arrives, however, he finds her murdered. He returns to Vladoviste and finds the local church burned down and Calugarul's mausoleum desecrated. When visiting the local pharmacist Dr. Maria Florescu discovers a bloody scarf. In the adjacent shed he finds an unconscious Pekmester in a coffin with a book from Boczow's library. Back at the inn, Moriani discovers a bomb on his door. He manages to defuse it. Ozana tells him that Pekmester and a man from Alba Iula were in his room. Moriani enters Pekmester's room and discovers that he and von Krüger have worked together, are both members of the Thule Society and try to follow the path of the dragon, which they suspect will end in the Castle of Twilight. Moriani also finds out that they discovered that Calugarul's tomb is empty.

With the help of the local fortune teller Luana, Moriani succeeds in finding a secret path in the mountains that leads him to the Castle of Twilight. On the way through an underground labyrinth he meets Pekmester, who explains to him that Florescu is a servant of Dracula. Moriani makes his way through all sorts of traps and finally reaches the catacombs where he finds Dracula's body in a coffin. Von Krüger arrives in the courtyard above and begs Moriani to trust him. However, the latter refuses to let him down and uses all of his anti-vampire weapons (garlic, holy water, crucifix etc.) on Dracula's body. The coffin disappears, however, leaving Moriani with the bomb as his only weapon. Florescu then arrives and reveals that she is / was Calugarul. When she followed the path of the dragon with the intention of killing Dracula, he offered her eternal life and a restoration of her beauty. She reveals to him that Pekmester killed both Luca and Boczow and Von Krüger is the head of Thule Society. She wishes Morinani luck when Dracula himself appears. When he approaches Moriani, however, he detonates the bomb and destroys the catacombs. A green mist rises from the ruins.

What follows is a cut to London in 1942. In a bunker under the city, Pekmester is questioned by Captain Cunningham of the British Army. Cunningham wants to know what the secret operation "Operation D" led by Von Krüger was all about in 1941. Pekmester asks Cunningham if the name Vlad Tepes means anything to him. Cunningham reacts disparagingly and Pekmester asks "Do you believe in vampires?" when the lights in the room suddenly go out.

Presentation and control

The game is a pure graphic adventure in the "point & click" style. You act from the so-called “1st person” perspective, that is, from the perspective of the main character. The game screen is a 360 ° 3D environmental animation that you can navigate through by moving the cursor towards the edge of the screen. Possible directions of movement are shown by a cursor stylized as an arrow, left-clicking takes you to the specified locations.
The game is played almost entirely with the mouse. The left mouse button is the action button, while a right click takes you to the inventory. Pressing the Escape key takes you to the main menu where you can load and save eight game states and exit the game.
Possible interactions are indicated by changing the cursor. In the case of possible directions of movement, the cursor becomes a directional arrow; in the case of interaction options with people, objects and objects, it becomes a magnifying glass . By left-clicking on a magnifying glass symbol, the respective object is enlarged and can either be picked up (hand symbol) or used (hand and gear symbol). If two gears appear, the object must be used with an item from the inventory. If it is the correct item, it is displayed on the game surface and has a green circle.
If you left-click the magnifying glass on a person, the person is shown enlarged. To the right of the person, as many rectangular symbols as there are possible conversations with the person are possible. The object shown in the box is the respective topic of conversation.
Objects from the inventory can be transferred directly to the game interface by left-clicking on them. Interactions with inventory items are only possible with certain items. These are displayed in separate inventory slots to the left of the actual inventory.
If interactions are no longer possible on a screen that has been enlarged with a magnifying glass, an arrow with a 180 ° bend appears, with which you can leave the screen.
There are many ways to die in the game, so each step should be carefully considered.

Others

The appearance of the main characters in the game was largely modeled on the exteriors of Keanu Reeves , Winona Ryder and Gary Oldman - the main cast of the 1992 film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula .

After only combination puzzles determined the plot in the first part, time-limited puzzles were added in the second part, which are stylized by a fading red bar, after which game death occurs. In addition, Jonathan Harker can use various firearms, whereby when the weapon is used, the game cursor turns into a target sight and the respective projectiles can be fired with a left click.

The Dutch ghost hunter Abraham van Helsing , who plays an important role in the novel and most of the film adaptations, does not appear in either game. However, it is largely used in John Seward's unnamed scientific colleague, whose voice can be heard while reading the vampire book.

Renfield , Dracula's earthly and insectivorous servant, was for Dracula 2 in Hopkins renamed.

In 2001 both parts came out again in a collective edition.

The Dracula Collection is now available with all 5 games.

In Dracula 4 we get to know Adam Stoker. A great-grandson of Bram Stoker.

The games are all in a 360 ° look, which was a hit on the PlayStation 1, especially for the times.

Dracula Ressurection plays after Bram Stoker Dracule is one of those sequels.

Web links

Dracula series at MobyGames (English)