Dracula In London

I came across this game on either Happy Puppy or The Gamer's Inn when these were game download sites back in the 90's.  This was one of the first games that I downloaded back on my 14.4K modem.  Back then a 14.4K modem it took fifteen minutes to download one megabyte of data.  Anyway, this game is a text based adventure board game with some basic graphics.  The game was meant to be played with up to six players, but you could easily play by yourself.

 

The game is based on characters from Bram Stoker's novel and has you take on the role of a group of six characters whose goal is to hunt down and stop Dracula.  Every action you do in the game takes three hours of time.  You spend your time checking out leads on Dracula's location and exploring buildings looking for clues or Dracula himself.  When you go to explore building you pick which characters will go.  You also can equip your characters with various items and some weapons to help you fight Dracula.  Every morning a new newspaper report comes out that you can either investigate or ignore.  Random events happen that can influence the way the game plays out.  Eventually, if you are unsuccessful finding Dracula, the game has you go to his castle where you confront Dracula to the death.  

 

The game is controlled by using letter commands for the menus and the arrow keys for movement and attacking enemies.  During combat each character moves in turns.    Besides fighting Dracula, there are other small enemies that will attack you while exploring like spiders and rats.  The combat is pretty basic but if a character dies, they are gone so some care needs to be taken when fighting random enemies.  Most fights can and should be avoided until you fight Dracula.

 

As I mentioned before, this game used text for everything and basic graphics for the environments.  The player characters are letters, the item icons are basic and the graphics for everything else are very basic.  The game has no music and some basic sound effects.  With that all said, the graphics and sound work for a DOS game that came out in the late 80's.  

 

Back when I first played this game I enjoyed it for what it is, a small text based adventure game.  As an adult playing the game I still enjoy it, but I don't find it very challenging.  Besides my first time playing it in decades when I got everyone killed, I have won every game since then with almost a perfect score each time.  This was one of the earliest games I remember playing on my first PC and as such it holds a special memory for me.  It may not hold up to the test of time, but that doesn't stop me from playing it in the slightest.