Drac Is Back is a computer role-playing game which was written by Ted Clawges and published by Syncro, Inc. for the Atari 800 in 1981.
The cover art for the game is actually pretty cool and in the early days of home computer games it was the box cover art that fired imaginations and enticed people to buy.
Drac Is Back is a text based game that has you set out to explore Dracula’s Castle. In all honesty the format and amount of involvement is a bit of a let down after getting fired up over the cover art from the box.
There really are not a lot of choices that you make in this particular game. There is a store in which you buy equipment and then inside the castle you choose which direction you want to go in but then your choices end there. The food you purchase in the store is automatically consumed as you play, the game uses the correct weapon for each foe as long as you have it in your inventory, combat is automatic and requires no input, and gold is automatically picked up.
When you start at the store you want to buy as much of everything as you can. There are three different kinds of monsters that you encounter in the game. Monsters, Vampires, and Werewolves. Armor is your protection against damage while a sword is necessary in order to slay the Monsters. A cross will keep vampires away from you so that they cannot cause damage and stakes are necessary for killing the Vampires. The bullets are silver and needed for killing Werewolves.
So the above picture is what a typical room depiction in Dracula’s Castle looks like. You may encounter any one of the three creature types or all of them at the same time as shown here. You are given a room number, the amount of gold in the room, and creatures present. You are then asked for ” your decision?”
The only real choice is to Attack and once you hit A the combat is resolved quickly for you as long as you have the appropriate inventory. Each time you slay a vampire a stake is removed from your inventory and each time you slay a werewolf it costs you a bullet as well. Your sword and armor will only last so long as well and both will eventually have to be replenished. If you do not attack but try to leave the room without killing the creatures within they get a parting shot at you and you will see your life counter decrease with a successful attack. Once you kill all of your enemies if you leave the room you pick up a percentage of the gold that was listed in the description. You rarely get it all and in some cases your percentage might actually end up being 0 and you get none of it. It is imperative that you get as much gold as possible because each visit to the store you will need to replenish all of your supplies.
The food that you purchase is quite literally your hit points so you definitely do not want to run out of food. A Magic Ring has the power to teleport you to the nearest store and once you use that ability the ring disappears from your inventory and you’ll have to purchase another if you want that perk again. The Magic Ring is 500 gold pieces which is very costly.
The above screen is what a typical map in progress of the castle looks like. You have the option of going N, S, W, or E and it shows where you are on the map and how far away you are from a particular store.
There are other special events which may occur as you visit different rooms within the castle. Sometimes a demon appears to steal all of your money which is extremely irritating. It is best that if you do not spend all of your money at the store that you store it in the bank. Do not take extra money with you for this very reason. Igor will sometimes randomly appear as well and steal your cross which then makes you very vulnerable to the vampires which you encounter. You may encounter Dracula as well who cannot be killed and he will take everything you have and also cut your hit points in half!
Drac Is Back is particularly easy to play. There just isn’t much to it. It does get progressively hard to “last” in the game because of the mechanics. The problem that I have with Drac Is Back is that there is no overarching purpose or plot. Your only goal is to move through the castle to acquire gold. It is hard to amass much gold however because you need to constantly reinvest your winnings into purchasing more equipment. There isn’t a score that is kept to try and beat; there is no quest to perform; there is no real endgame. When one of these games that I encounter has a particular quest to perform I find I am obsessed with trying to complete that particular quest. For example, even Catacombs of the Phantoms had a particular quest to perform and I stuck with that game until I emerged victorious. In Drac Is Back there is no purpose other than to see how long you can last and even then there is no prior score to compare to or try to beat. I played Drac Is Back for about four hours until I felt quite saturated with the experience and that I had enough information to do an informed write up for you.
For my next game challenge I am facing a 1980 text adventure entitled Kidnapped in which I’ve been abducted and have to escape from a multi-story building. Until next time…