Dracula: Resurrection is a 1999 graphic adventure video game developed by Index+. Set in 1904 Transylvania, the game serves as a follow-up to Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Seven years after the death of Count Dracula, Jonathan Harker's wife Mina finds herself mysteriously drawn back to Transylvania. Jonathan subsequently travels to Borgo Pass in an effort to rescue her. The player assumes the role of Jonathan and uses a point-and-click interface to solve puzzles and navigate the game's world, often with the help of an object called the Dragon Ring.
Production of Dracula was led by Jacques Simian of Index+. It was the company's first traditional video game: the team had previously created software with an educational and cultural tourism emphasis, a style that informed Draculas design. Building from myths, legends, Bram Stoker's novel and films about vampires, Draculas creators sought to create a follow-up to Stoker's story that was imbued with the same atmosphere of dread as its predecessor. The game underwent a rapid development cycle of 8 months, and was first launched in Europe in October 1999. In North America, it was published by DreamCatcher Interactive the following year. There were dubs in French, English, Spanish, German, Italian, Hungarian and Czech.
Dracula received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to Metacritic. Reviewers praised the game's graphics and some of the puzzles, but criticized the voice acting, plot and the game's brevity. Selling 200,000 units worldwide by September 2000, the game was a commercial success. In North America, it became a top title for DreamCatcher and sold 170,000 units by 2003. Dracula and its direct sequel, Dracula 2: The Last Sanctuary (2000), reached combined global sales above 1 million units by April 2007. After Dracula 2s release, the Dracula series went on hiatus until the 2007 announcement of Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon by Kheops Studio and MC2 France. Fourth and fifth entries in the series, developed by Koalabs and published by Anuman, appeared in 2013.
Gameplay
Dracula: Resurrection is a graphic adventure game that takes place from a character's eye-view in a pre-rendered graphical environment. The player uses a point-and-click interface, with a cursor locked in the screen's center, to navigate the game world, gather items, interact with non-player characters and solve puzzles. In a manner that has been compared to Myst, Dracula restricts player movement to jumps between static screens in the game world. Each screen is panoramic and allows the player to look around in 360 degrees. Progression in Dracula is linear: the player cannot backtrack to the game's primary areas once they have been completed.
Draculas puzzles often involve locating and using items to progress, and many revolve around an object called the Dragon Ring that is reused throughout the game. Collected items may be examined and selected on the inventory screen, which the player toggles with a button press. As the player mouses over the game environments, the cursor changes shape in a context-sensitive manner to illustrate the possible actions. For example, the hand cursor indicates that an item can be picked up, while the cog cursor indicates that the player can use an item on a location.
The iOS re-release of Dracula includes a "Compass Look" feature, which uses the gyroscope inside the player's iPad or iPhone to control the first-person view. This version of the game also contains an optional "Help" function for beginners, which keeps every on-screen interaction point highlighted at all times.
Plot
Dracula: Resurrection begins by recounting the final scene of Bram Stoker's original novel. In the year 1897, protagonists Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris ambush the caravan of Count Dracula and his minions in Borgo Pass. Although Morris dies in the struggle, the pair succeeds in killing Dracula and releasing Jonathan's wife Mina from her psychic enslavement to the vampire. Afterward, an ellipsis takes the story forward seven years. The Harkers' new life in England is disrupted by Mina's sudden disappearance, and Jonathan finds a letter from his wife that suggests Dracula's involvement. He subsequently tracks her to Transylvania. Stopping for directions at the Borgo Pass Inn, he has a brief encounter with two suspicious characters, followers of Dracula. Jonathan questions the innkeeper Barina about Dracula's castle, but she warns him against traveling there in the dark, especially as it is Saint George's Eve, a night on which evil spirits move freely.
Jonathan gets directions to the castle from Micha, a bar patron, who suggests using the bridge near the inn. He claims that the building is abandoned, and that Dracula has not been seen since his death. However, Dracula's henchmen Goran and Iorga roam the countryside around the inn, and Iorga stands guard at the bridge to prevent Jonathan's passage. Jonathan travels to a nearby cemetery, where he sees a mysterious blue light near a representation of Saint George. Using a pickaxe, he digs up a section of the ground there and discovers the Dragon Ring beneath. When Jonathan brings the ring back to Micha, he warns him that it relates to the evil Dracul, somehow connected to Dracula, and that dragons are associated with Hell in Transylvania. Micha also informs Jonathan that the followers of Dracula, Viorel and his henchmen, have recently become active again after a long disappearance, and questions whom they could be working for.
Jonathan manages to trick and knock out Iorga and Goran, opening the path to the bridge and the henchmen's cabin. Viorel is angered and begins to search for the perpetrator; in terror, Barina bars the doors to the inn. The bridge collapses when Jonathan attempts to cross it, which forces him to find another way. After he sneaks back into the inn, Barina tells him that her husband had died after finding a tunnel in the basement, and gives Jonathan access to his journal. The book explains that the Dragon Ring is a key to Dracula's lair, to which the tunnel leads, and that Barina's husband had hidden the ring in the cemetery to keep the door closed. Jonathan uses the Dragon Ring to enter, and is ultimately led to an abandoned mine shaft below the henchmen's cabin. Above, Viorel cuts the rope to Jonathan's elevator. Now trapped underground, Jonathan explores and uses the Dragon Ring to forge a path to Dracula's castle. As he travels, it is revealed that Dracula is watching, and that his plan was always for Jonathan to bring the Dragon Ring into his domain.
Upon arriving inside the castle grounds, Jonathan progresses with the help of the Dragon Ring. He soon opens the cell of an old woman named Dorko, a witch imprisoned by Dracula and kept outside the main castle by a curse. She was once a follower of Dracul, Dracula's father, until Dracula banished her after his father's death. She offers to help Jonathan find Mina in exchange for her own freedom. Theorizing that his wife is held in Dracula's crypt under the watch of Dracula's brides, Dorko explains that two objects are necessary to locate Mina: an amulet and the medal of the Dragon Brotherhood. Dorko opens a passage into the castle for Jonathan, and he begins to explore Dracula's realm, including his library and personal quarters. In the library, Jonathan discovers a letter addressed to him, in which Dracula tells him that he has walked into a trap, that Dracula himself has left for London and that his brides will kill Jonathan when nightfall arrives.
Continuing to explore with the help of the Dragon Ring and Dorko's advice, Jonathan finds the medal and opens the way to Dracula's secret chamber. There, a journal entry reveals that Dracula had met Leonardo da Vinci in 1468 and taken the blueprint for his ornithopter, which Dracula has successfully constructed and placed in the castle tower. Jonathan proceeds to the crypt and takes the amulet, but is cornered by Dracula's brides, who claim that Dorko is using him. However, they are unable to attack him directly while he holds the Dragon Ring, and plan instead to wait until he falls unconscious from exhaustion. Jonathan opens a window to drive the brides away with sunlight and proceeds to the attic. Dorko then confronts him and demands the amulet, the curse having been lifted when Jonathan took the object.
When Jonathan gives her the amulet in exchange for Mina, Dorko betrays him, explaining that she wants to rule with Dracula as she had with Dracul. She plans to use Jonathan, Mina and the Dragon Ring to prove her loyalty and secure her position with Dracula. Dorko locks them in the attic, but Jonathan uses the Dragon Ring to open a path for the ornithopter to launch. Dracula's brides arrive and attempt to stop Jonathan's escape in the machine. However, he eludes them and flies out with the unconscious Mina. As the game ends, he remarks that Mina can never be safe while Dracula lives, and that he must defeat the Count once and for all upon their return to London.
Development Dracula: Resurrection was a co-production between Index+ and the companies France Telecom Multimedia and Canal+ Multimedia. The project was headed by Index's long-time designer, art director and writer Jacques Simian, who had previously art directed the developer's Opération Teddy Bear. Dracula represented a departure in style for Index. The company had achieved success by developing software with an educational and cultural tourism emphasis; conversely, Dracula was designed as its first traditional computer game. Génération 4s Luc-Santiago Rodriguez called this "the logical continuation" of Index+'s process, but noted that the team sought continuity with its previous work, which had centered on immediate hooks, unique concepts and a blend of "play and culture" that favored ease-of-use.
Although they built from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, the game's creators billed their project as "an interactive sequel" to the book, rather than a literal adaptation. Nevertheless, they sought to imbue it with an atmosphere of dread like that of its source material. Génération 4 reported that Simian was "[p]assionate about Stoker's novel and the story of Vlad Tepes"; the designer claimed to have read the original Dracula several dozen times. To create the game's plot, the team wrote that it worked from "popular legend, superstition and myth". The creators noted that the etymology of Dracula's name in Romanian was unclear—possibly implying a relation to both Satan and dragons—and that they drew from the story of Saint George and the Dragon as the source for the central Dragon Ring item. William of Newburgh's Historia rerum Anglicarum was referenced as well. Dracula's brides were inspired by the Greco-Roman Strix monster, which the team connected to mythological creatures such as Lamia, Empusa, Onoskelis, the Gello and the One Thousand and One Nights portrayal of ghouls.
According to the team, the environments in Dracula were built from "sketches, photographs, architectural plans, works on Transylvania" and other such sources. Films about vampires also influenced this work. Simian cited the aesthetic of Bram Stoker's Dracula as a personal favorite, and Génération 4s Noël Chanat wrote that the game took cues from this movie. The 1931 film Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, was referenced for a section of Dracula's castle, while the Borgo Pass inn borrowed from Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers. In retrospect, co-writer François Villard noted that the unpredictability of player interaction required the creation of "limited universes as to the player's ability to move", and a storytelling model focused heavily on place. To build Draculas 360° panoramic environments, the team worked with Phoenix VR, a middleware engine provided by 4X Technologies. The software was also used in games such as Amerzone. For Draculas cutscenes, the team licensed 4X Technologies' "4X Movie" codec.